The Oshkosh [OSK] Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) program is delivering quality products and as it overcomes challenges such as the time it took to complete a new facility and is expected to return to the original schedule, a company official said.
“With our government partner, we modified the original contract schedule to slow the ramp slightly, as we were struggling to meet the original ramp up numbers, the government agreed…and by the end of this Fiscal Year that schedule will be as per the original contact,” Mike Ivy, vice president and general manager of for Army Programs at Oshkosh, told Defense Daily in an interview.
Reasons for the production slowdown included the E-Coat facility took longer than anticipated to get up and running (Defense Daily, Nov. 20, 2009). Oshkosh invested some $45 million in capital in the facility housing a corrosion inhibitor process.
Additional time was needed to produce the FMTV cab, Ivy said. While the FMTV truck is made to a government-owned technical data package there was no such package for the cab, which was designed by former FMTV producer BAE Systems.
Oshkosh had to reverse engineer the cab, which again took a little longer than anticipated and took time to get the manufacturing process to acceptable quality standards, Ivy said.
There were any number of challenges for the program, Ivy said, but now, “we’re e-coating, making cabs to standard, in fact, making improvements over the original cab…the process is working to schedule.”
Ivy laid all this out at a recent meeting with Army leaders, providing an update with several messages: that Oshkosh is delivering high quality trucks, as measured “virtually any way you want” as the Defense Contract Management Agency inspectors are inspecting and accepting the vehicles; and the program office in Warren, Mich., continually looks at the quality of process and the suppliers.
“We consider that we’re providing the government exceptional value on this program,” Ivy said.
The company yesterday said under the latest, more than $904 million Army order, it would deliver nearly 7,000 additional FTMV trucks and trailers. Oshkosh has now received orders for nearly 26,000 FMTV trucks and trailers under the five-year contract through 2015.
Ivy said: “Our robust manufacturing capabilities, combined with the exceptional value Oshkosh brings to this program as a specialty vehicle manufacturer, prompted the Army to order more vehicles at an earlier point in the program than they had anticipated before the award to Oshkosh.”
However, also yesterday, Pete Skibitski,a defense analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, sees ‘a bumpy road ahead,” for Oshkosh and said “we are reducing our rating on OSK from Neutral to Reduce. ” The defense budget, profitability concerns and a lower defense aftermarket revenue were cited among reasons for his caution.
As a truck maker, Oshkosh was confident from the beginning it could provide the government a higher quality product built to higher quality standards at better value, Ivy said. The company has not only built lots of trucks but has buying power in the marketplace because of the scale and expertise, leading to “exceptional value.”
For example, the company is working on an FMTV wrecker. The customer didn’t like the existing wrecker, because of the wrecker mechanism itself, Ivy said. After Oshkosh won the FMTV contract, the government asked if it could propose an alternative for the wrecker mechanism.
Oshkosh quickly provided an alternative, he said. Since the company already made wreckers for the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck and a wrecker for the Marines. “We took the best of those systems and put it together on the back of the FMTV wrecker and provided it to the government” as an alternative. Additionally, anyone trained on the HEMTT or Marines wrecker would be familiar with the proposed FMTV version.
“We were able to turn it around quickly and built test articles that are currently running miles at Aberdeen [Proving Ground, Md.] Ivy said. All feedback appears to be that the government is “delighted.”
The Army FMTV acquisition objective is 80,000 for the fleet size, which is likely a fairly fluid number. The service over time is likely to divest itself of soft-skin cabs and move to armor. Additionally, the service would in future like to move away from the older 939 series five-ton trucks, perhaps moving to FMTV,
The Oshkosh FMTV program is operating two shifts across most of its operations, and in some areas running three shifts.
“We’re building and delivering, today, on any given day 22 and 24 vehicles, planning to ramp up to more than 35 a day, Ivy said. The FMTV consists of 17 models ranging from 2.5-ton to 10-ton payloads. The vehicles have a parts commonality of more than 80 percent, resulting in streamlined maintenance, training, sustainment and overall cost efficiency.
The company can sell the FMTV abroad and “is actively pursuing development of foreign markets,” Ivy said.