Accelerating U.S. Navy readiness with advanced technologies

Challenge

Commander, Naval Surface Force Atlantic (CNSL) required advanced analytic tools to improve materiel readiness of Navy warships preparing for deployment. Initial tasks focused on tracking warship readiness, managing equipment degradations and identifying maintenance challenges early. These tasks supported the goals of decreasing repair timelines and enabling warships to deploy on schedule with minimal equipment degradations.

To reach these goals, the Navy needed to update manual processes, integrate disparate data sources, and remove duplicative efforts that were compromising prompt readiness analysis and data-informed decision-making. Similarly, CNSL needed to access siloed data environments across outdated systems to integrate the data needed to prepare for routine briefings and capture accurate insights for task prioritization. These time-consuming, non-standardized processes were detracting from the time needed to conduct higher cognitive tasks like readiness assessments, supply chain analysis, and predictive prioritization to accelerate Combat Surge Readiness (CSR).

Approach

Guidehouse partnered with military and civilian staff to document and automate processes, develop sustainable dashboards and visualizations, and laid the foundation for data governance to help the organization scale best practices as new resources were introduced. Our team also provided training and communications materials to support user adoption of new processes.

Our approach included:

• Actionable insights and visualizations. We built interactive dashboards to track critical metrics, support leadership readiness briefings, and drive data-informed decisions.
• Data modernization and automation. By designing and evolving cloud-based data solutions to automate data ingestion, cleansing, and transformation, we enable more accurate, timely updates.
• Predictive modeling. Leveraging AI/ML tools, the display anticipated parts shortages based on demand trends.
• Governance, training, and future planning. After evaluating the data governance elements, we developed a scalable governance framework, a modernization roadmap, and predictive analytics pipelines to improve forecasting and operational efficiency.

Together, these efforts enhanced data transparency, accelerated analysis, and empowered CNSL to achieve mission objectives efficiently and effectively.

Impact

Today, CNSL is using the advanced analytics and automation tools we’ve developed for its daily processes, live briefings, and data-driven decision-making, including:

• A Fleet Combat Readiness Dashboard that displays specific Fleet criteria and redlines—enabling data-driven decisions about operational risks, asset use, warship availability, and potential timeline conflicts.
• A suite of supply planning dashboards that enable real-time tracking of maintenance, supply health, on-ship allowance lists, and warship readiness.
• Natural language processing to streamline equipment degradation tagging, mitigate human error, create data linkages not previously available, and identify critical systems of concern and equipment repair pathways.
• A robotic process automation bot that identifies fund de-obligation opportunities—resulting in the reallocation of more than $1.9 million to higher priority, mission critical areas after the first use.
• An automated readiness metrics dashboard that replaces an 8-hour manual process with a 15-minute automated refresh, enabling the Navy to analyze equipment degradations, mission capability requirements, and parts status.

These dashboards, analytics, standardized processes, documentation, and communication materials have helped accelerate CNSL’s daily battle rhythm. Our end-to-end solutions and analytic tools have improved data fidelity, increased visibility into root cause drivers, provided accurate, reliable data, and yielded comprehensive insights for accelerated warship readiness.