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The Excalibur 155mm Precision Guided Extended Range Artillery Projectile is a rocket-propelled shell with on-board guidance capabilities that allow it to strike targets "within-meters" accuracy over ranges of tens of kilometers. Because of its effectiveness, Excalibur reduces
the logistical burden for deployed ground forces. It also provides lower collateral damage through its concentrated fragmentation pattern, increased precision and near-vertical descent.

By nature the Excalibur is a very complex (and hence costly) device,
to be fielded in large quantities (up to 250,000). Thus optimizing processes used to manufacture individual complex components can yield significant payoffs to the Department of Defense.

PVI was charged with optimizing the manufacturing processes for key Excalibur components. By re-evaluating the manufacturing methods and applying a deterministic approach for precision manufacturing, improve-ments were made that reduce machine time per part and shortened manufacturing time. The improvements resulting from the completed effort promises to yield a net savings exceeding $30M over the life of the project.

The next step for PVI is to apply the same methodologies to improve the manufacturing processes of the titanium canards, which are used for flight guidance. PVI expects this optimization to yield even larger savings.