My profession is in the United States Navy as a Boatswain's Mate. Boatswain's Mates is an old an honorable rate
in the navy dating back to days of sailing. When I first came in the navy as a Deck Seamen there wasn't any work to be
done with any thing having to do with technology to much. It was more of here's a paint brush, and now get to work.
Since then I have moved up a few pay grades and deal with a bit more than just painting, sweeping, and cleaning. Even
with that being said my job now consists more of being on a computer ordering parts, writing evaluations, and making
sure personnel are on task . I find myself having to learn how to operate different programs that are probably out dated to
modern day technology. Don't get me wrong the US Navy does have some of the newest technology out there today just
not so much in my line of work.
One technology advancement that I have had a lot of experience with is a program called SKED. It tracks all the
maintenance that is to be done, and has been done for a work center. Before SKED they had to use papers to track all of
this. As we all know papers can get lost or damaged very easily and then lose all of your information. One example is
with the old system you would only have one Maintenance Requirement Card(MRC). If you lost it you couldn't just reprint
another one you would have to wait to get back in-port to replace it. Using SKED your able to print new ones right away,
and continue you on with work. With SKED you are able to log on and efficiently document all the work that has been
done and track what equipment is up next to be done or find out when it was done last time. SKED is also linked to
another program(OMNS-NG) that gives you the ability to write jobs for specific equipment that is damaged or needs
replaced. It has taken the Planned Maintenance System(PMS) in the Navy to a much greater level of accountability