CERDEC’s Product Realization Engineering and Quality Directorate provides the Army with applied engineering to Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems, and increases efficiency and effectiveness to cost, schedule, delivery and system reliability.
The Army relies on critical but aging systems as well as cutting edge technologies. Prolonged use of these systems requires engineering planning and risk mitigation in order to continue to meet Soldiers’ increasingly complex mission requirements.
CERDEC’s Product Realization Engineering and Quality Directorate applies engineering and technical skills across the product lifecycle to reduce risk and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of products, systems and operations for the Army. PRD’s knowledge, skills and abilities enable product realization of systems and technologies used by Soldiers to fulfill complex mission requirements. Additionally, PRD fortifies already fielded Soldier C4ISR capabilities so the Army can transition those systems to new and greater systems for its next generation force.
PRD also provides systems engineering, product data and configuration management, reliability and maintainability management, engineering tools’ specification and standards program management, and industrial base management.
CERDEC PRD provides the Army C4ISR community with technical competency management, technical support, and technical leadership throughout all phases of the product lifecycle for product and manufacturing engineering, quality assurance support, value engineering, configuration management, maintenance concept engineering, and technical project leadership and acquisition expertise.
Specialty Engineering and Leadership
Specialty engineering aims to provide the Army with reduced risk and increased efficiency and effectiveness in the areas of cost, schedule, delivery, and system and equipment reliability. Collectively, these competencies consist of skills necessary for turning ideas or products into a reality. CERDEC PRD manages and provides specialty engineering missions and functions across the Army Team C4ISR.
Production and Manufacturing Engineering
Production and Manufacturing Engineering is a discipline of engineering dealing with different manufacturing practices and the research and development of systems, processes, machines, tools and equipment that turn raw materials into a new product.
PRD executes the Defense Department’s Manufacturing Technology (MANTECH) program mission for CERDEC. The MANTECH program was established to help develop and improve manufacturing processes, techniques and equipment to provide timely reliable and economical production for DOD systems.
PRD leads manufacturing and quality assessments of C4ISR systems to determine manufacturing readiness and overall costs.
CERDEC PRD provides the C4ISR community with technical competency management, technical support, and technical leadership throughout all phases of the C4ISR product lifecycle. CERDEC PRD provides:
- Designs for manufacturing systems
- Engineering and integration including computer-aided design, design studies and analysis, high level detailed specification preparations, configuration management and document controls, fabrication, assembly and simulation, modeling, maintainability, assessments, training
- Industrial-base developments
- Contractual manufacturing actions such as pre- and post-award surveys and monitoring of contractor production lines
- Technical data reviews
- Engineering support to the Defense Logistics Agency
- Logistic modernization program data quality
- Operation and maintenance, to include repair, reset, recapitalization and rebuild
- Item unique identification
- Supply chain management including supplier partnerships and supply network solutions
- Reverse engineering
- Total ownership cost reduction
- Obsolescence management
- Technology transfer, technology refresh, technology insertion
- Program/Project management
- Manufacturing technology training
- Manufacturing readiness assessments
Quality Engineering, Quality Assurance, and Test & Evaluation
PRD provides the Army C4ISR community with quality assurance support; product and process assessment and improvement; reliability, risk and quality engineering; and performance analysis.
This includes:
- Development and implementation of continuous product/process improvement initiatives
- Management of Product Quality Deficiency Reports (PQDR) and root cause analysis
- Program Management focal point for the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) interaction preparing Quality Assurance Letters of Instructions (QALI) and/or ensuring that inspection authority has been delegated to the appropriate offices
- Contractor Quality Management Systems Assessment and Auditing for contractual compliance
- Quality planning, assessments and training
- C4ISR Army Career Program Management for career field CP-15
- Assistance in the development of Quality Assurance Surveillance Plans (QASPs)
- Test and Evaluation strategic planning, management and execution
- Developmental performance
- Qualification (dynamic, climatic)
- Systems safety
- Information assurance
- Interoperability
- Live fire test and evaluation and operational testing for early and limited user tests
- Force development test
- Test and Evaluation Master Plan (TEMP) development and execution
- Detailed test planning
- Data collection, analysis and evaluation
- Test monitoring/witnessing
- Environmental testing
- Prototype and first article testing, including First Article Test Plan/First Article Test Report
- Independent verifications and validations
- Test plan and program management
- Test strategy
- Modeling and simulation to support testing, including verification, validation and accreditation
- Test and evaluation working-level initial production tests, as well as reliability and maintainability, which includes reliability requirements determination and analysis
- Reliability simulation, modeling and testing
- Reliability program management
Configuration Management
PRD provides expertise to establish and maintain product technical data to ensure that hardware and software characteristics match Soldier requirements throughout the lifecycle and across the C4ISR community.
PRD manages C4ISR systems and products configuration management and document control, engineering change proposals, requests for deviations, requests for waiver, physical configuration audits, configuration item verification reviews, and establishes and maintains product technical baselines.
Value Engineering
PRD provides value engineering leadership and expertise across the C4ISR community to improve projects, products and processes in support of Soldiers. Value engineering aims to achieve the most cost effective way to meet the desired functionality of a program or system while still meeting quality and performance expectations.
Value engineering is a powerful problem-solving methodology that uses a function-oriented, systematic team approach to analyze and improve value in a product, facility design, system or service. It can reduce or avoid costs and frequently enhances or improves functional value, reliability and maintainability, and processes and procedures.
Technical Project Leadership and Acquisition Expertise
PRD provides value engineering leadership and expertise across the C4ISR community to improve projects, products and processes in support of Soldiers. Value engineering aims to achieve the most cost effective way to meet the desired functionality of a program or system while still meeting quality and performance expectations.
Value engineering is a powerful problem-solving methodology that uses a function-oriented, systematic team approach to analyze and improve value in a product, facility design, system or service. It can reduce or avoid costs and frequently enhances or improves functional value, reliability and maintainability, and processes and procedures.
Maintenance Concept Engineering
PRD optimizes and manages systems programming, analysis and technical documentation to enhance product maintainability across the C4ISR community. PRD provides the Army C4ISR Community with:
- Performance based logistics planning
- Maintenance concept development including Level of Repair Analysis (LORA), Maintenance Engineering tasks, Maintenance Allocation Charts (MAC), Core Logistics Analysis (CLA), Condition Based Maintenance (CBM), and Maintenance Demonstrations
- Material releases
- System reliability and maintainability analyses
- Technical manuals and Repair Parts Special Tools Lists (RPSTL)
- Equipment improvement recommendations
- Ergonomic/human performance analyses
- Demilitarization challenges
- Provisioning and overall sparing concepts Fielded system problem resolution
