CB-OTHs are the primary asset used by the Medium and High Endurance cutters of the Coast Guard fleet to accomplish fisheries, migration and law enforcement boardings. Faced with rapidly rising, recurring costs and a significant level of effort of maintenance staff effort to ensure CB-OTHs were available and reliable, the USCG Small Boat Product Line turned to industry to find a solution in the form of a rotatable pool of boats. The proposed approach was to run a 6 month prototype program to determine program viability through a set of measures and then decide whether or not to continue the program and if so in what form.

This paper will look at the challenges of setting up the pool, measuring whether the pool was succeeding or failing and what was implemented on the repair side to eliminate errors and improve reliability. Some of the areas looked at will include quality assurance, knowledge management, workforce productivity, scheduling and performance.