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By Scott Kasen and Griffin Keller, Austal USA Advanced Technologies
Jan 03, 2025
In September, Austal USA Advanced Technologies (Austal USA) announced a partnership with ASTM International to grow additive manufacturing (AM) capacity in the maritime industrial base (MIB) to support the construction and sustainment of the U.S. Navy’s surface and submarine fleets. This collaboration addresses challenges related to long lead times with the castings and fittings that play a critical role in pacing ship construction and maintenance schedules.
Austal USA is a ship manufacturer headquartered in Mobile, AL, with service centers in San Diego, CA, and Singapore. Their advanced technologies department, based in Charlottesville, VA, oversees program management and operation of the U.S. Navy’s Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence (AM CoE) in Danville, VA. While the AM CoE serves as the Navy’s central hub for the advancement of AM for maritime demands, the facility is part of a much larger ecosystem and effort initiated by non-profit BlueForge Alliance, whose mission is to enable the submarine manufacturing industry to build and maintain America’s next generation of undersea platforms by increasing capability, capacity, collaboration, and resilience.
The AM CoE itself is an end-to-end advanced manufacturing facility created to accomplish first article printing and testing of ship parts. The proficiency and learning gained during this work is captured in data packages comprising digital instructions that can be transferred to industry suppliers for scaling and surge serial production.
But not just any supplier can produce parts for the Navy fleet. The AM CoE is working to “activate” suppliers – meaning that they are qualified to produce Navy parts of moderate to high risk – using a thorough six-step process focused in two areas: the review and improvement of quality systems; and the technical qualification of an AM material process combination. Requirements for the latter are presented in both Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) technical publications and program peculiar documents (PPD), Navy documents which are similar to the industry’s version of technical standards.
To ensure a comprehensive, streamlined, and standardized supplier-activation process, Austal USA selected ASTM to provide support for technical qualification. The partnership includes the creation of training modules; harmonization of the onboarding processes; development of standardized questionnaires presented to suppliers for data intake; and formalization of a playbook to guide potential suppliers step-by-step through the minutiae of the effort. Ultimately, the initiative aims to drive best practices, ensure compliance with NAVSEA AM requirements, and create a simplified path to activation.
The first phase of the effort began with a kickoff workshop in October involving shipyards, NAVSEA technical experts, part procurement agencies, and workforce-development participants. ASTM is conducting an industry standards applicability evaluation, comparing its own standards to the Navy’s. By identifying overlapping requirements, suppliers who have already adopted related ASTM standards may find themselves far down the activation pathway, reducing schedule, effort, and expense to meet the requirements set forth by the Navy. This has the potential to be a major accelerator given the widespread adoption of ASTM standards.
ASTM is also tasked with providing an AM-specific “train-the-trainers” program for Austal USA’s supplier-development team to further accelerate the introduction of AM contract manufacturers into the maritime industrial base. Existing ASTM training programs are being leveraged to design this new program, which allows the organization to deliver quicker and at a higher level of quality than would be possible without the use of the ASTM training bank.●
Headquarters: Austal USA, Mobile, AL, USA
Description: Ship manufacturer headquartered in Mobile, with service centers in San Diego, CA, and Singapore and a technology center in Charlottesville, VA.
Number of staff: Over 3,000 skilled workforce
Trading area: Global
January / February 2025
