Accenture helps Navy shipyards go paperless by moving documents onto tablet computers
WASHINGTON, 17 Oct. 2016. U.S. Navy surface ship experts needed a way to help Navy shipyards go paperless by moving the massive amounts of paper documents necessary to maintain the Navy's surface ship and submarine fleets onto tablet computers. They found their solution from Accenture Federal Services LLC in Arlington, Va.
Officials of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington have announced an $18.2 million contract modification for Accenture to continue developing the Electronic Technical Work Document (eTWD) system for paperless shipboard maintenance.
The eTWD will replace paper-driven instructions and processes at naval shipyards by integrating work instructions, drawings, data tables, verification signatures, problem resolution and work control forms into an online certifiable technical work document.
Accenture won the original $6.7 million eTWD contract in August 2014. The company won the latest $18.2 million eTWD contract modification late last month.
The eTWD system will provide an interactive electronic technical work document system for use in the industrial environment aboard ship and in shore facilities for maintenance, repair, and modernization work in the naval shipyards. The eTWD will control the work flow, preparation, and approval of instructions, release of work, execution, and certification, Navy officials say.
The eTWD is a re-engineering solution in the way public naval shipyards will plan, execute, and certify numerous work documents on ship maintenance. This approach seeks to switch the hard-copy paper documents to a paperless environment using electronic document management on a handheld tablet computer.
The Navy operates four public shipyards: the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash.; the Norfolk Naval Yard in Norfolk, Va.; the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine; and the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Shifting to electronic document management eliminates efforts to manage and maintain paper copies, reduces data entry errors, and reduces the time necessary to disseminate information.
It improves efficiency by changing the process of certification to an electronic function that authenticates proper completion of all work and tests in real time, vs. after-the-fact methodology currently used, Navy officials say.
On this contract modification Accenture will do the work Kittery, Maine; and Norfolk, Va., and should be finished by January 2018. For more information contact Accenture Federal Services online at www.accenture.com, or Naval Sea Systems Command at www.navsea.navy.mil.
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John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
