BAE Systems Develops Data Management Solution to Improve Ship Availability for Royal Navy

The U.K. Ministry of Defence (MOD) has awarded a five year contract to BAE Systems to provide a data management system to multiple Royal Navy ships including the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers, Type 45 destroyers and the new Type 26 frigates.

The BAE Systems tool, known as Support Information Knowledge Management (S-IKM), allows secure and efficient management of the vast quantity of data that is required to provide on-shore support and maintenance for complex warships, including technical manuals, schematics and part numbers.

Using data analytics to inform through-life support and improve ship availability, S-IKM is designed to provide faster and more cost-effective support to ensure the right information is at the right place at the right time.

It will play a fundamental role in the digital ambitions of the Royal Navy, drastically improving the operational support to service personnel at sea who will be able to reliably and easily access the information they need exactly when they need it.

S-IKM also provides a convenient and easily-deployable capability to allow the support of warships around the world. To better support warships, data needs to be shared efficiently and securely across the support enterprise, comprising the Royal Navy, the MOD and dozens of industrial suppliers. S-IKM enables this while allowing the MOD to retain ownership and control of its data.

BAE Systems developed S-IKM by identifying and integrating specialist technologies from other expert suppliers. These include Eurostep’s ShareAspace product lifecycle management (PLM) collaboration software, TIBCO's data management & analytics platform, and Genpact’s Cora SeQuence business process management software.

Combined, these provide a powerful tool to allow the configuration and management of technical information across a wide range of ship support activities. The intent is to extend the offer to other complex defence assets, across the sea, air and land domains.