So says Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of Defense for business transformation. Warfighters across the services “need communication with their supply chain to get the status of all their assets—aircraft, ground platforms and weapons,” Brinkley says. “As sense-and-respond emerges, the data standards are becoming more clear.”

To that end, all the services’ enterprise systems leaders and their enterprise resource planning implementation teams meet monthly to work out what needs to be done across the Defense Department and what the individual services should accomplish on their own. (Read about sense-and-respond, Page 20.)

The teams and DOD’s chiefs have gained a lot of insights at the monthly meetings, Brinkley says. “The Office of the Secretary of Defense focuses just on defining the data standards necessary for joint operations. We allow the services to adhere to those standards but to do the service-specific things themselves. That was a significant lesson we’ve learned” in the course of pushing the department toward its first integrated, common business architecture.

Last September’s baseline release, the Business Enterprise Architecture 3.0, specifies “all the data standards necessary for joint logistics interoperability,” he says. Besides logistics, the architecture will encompass systems that handle acquisition, finance, personnel, real property and suppliers. Its goal is full compliance with the DOD Architectural Framework and, eventually, the Federal Enterprise Architecture.

In addition to collaboration services such as videoconferencing, the BEA technical standards define dozens of requirements for:

• Application-specific data interchange
• Calendaring and scheduling
• Database management
• Electronic data interchange
• Graphics
• Messaging
• Modeling and simulation
• Networking
• Objects
• Operating system services
• Platform communications
• Web services.

Brinkley says the Government Accountability Office gave “a positive review” to BEA 3.0. His Business Transformation Agency will continue to issue incremental releases of BEA every six to 12 months, increasingly binding together financial and logistics data. The agency, established last October, has a fiscal 2007 budget of roughly $179 million.

BEA Release 4.0, due this September, “shows a lot of energy and investment” in updating, for example, unique asset identification by technologies such as radio frequency ID tagging, Brinkley says.

“Under the enterprise transition plan, every dollar departmentwide and in the three military services’ spending will be identified by function and organization,” he says. “The three major agencies [the Defense Logistics Agency, Defense Finance and Accounting Service, and Transportation Command] will have tight collaboration. And by law, the three services have to invest in business systems that align with BEA.”

The Army, whose troubled Wholesale Logistics Modernization dates back to the 1990s, last March transferred the effort, now called the Logistics Modernization Program, from the Army Materiel Command to the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems. Under PEO EIS, Computer Sciences Corp. continues to be the Army’s lead contractor in transitioning two old Cobol-based logistics systems—the Commodity Command Standard System and the Standard Depot System—to modern ERP software from SAP America Inc. of Newtown Square, Pa.

“We’ve focused heavily this year on data cleansing in the two old systems and complying with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act,” says deputy LMP project manager Diane O’Connor. “We got a new governance structure in March, and we’re working very closely with Mr. Brinkley’s office to jump-start the project with the Defense

Sean McCormick
“Every dollar departmentwide and in the three military services’ spending will be identified by function and organization,” Defense undersecretary Paul Brinkley says.

Logistics Management System, interface with DOD’s Wide Area Workflow [a departmentwide paperless contracting application] and comply with the Standard Financial Information Structure.”

O’Connor says the Army is “tackling all that jointly with BTA.” LMP accelerated DLMS migration plans from 2010 to 2007. “It’s by far the Army’s most complex ERP implementation to date” and probably one of the largest in the world. Despite the shortened completion date, “there’s no change in the dollars.”

The Big, Big Picture
To do business with the Army’s 80 major trading partners, LMP incorporates 20 SAP modules including the vendor’s New Dimension products to handle warehousing, customer relationship management and other logistics functions. “We have the full range—supply chain, procurement, acquisition, depot maintenance, requisitioning and demand planning,” O’Connor says.

With the deadline about a year away, LMP is now live and running at 14 Army locations (see box, this page). The Army Materiel Command’s remaining sites and depots are still in transition, but LMP already has about 4,000 users—about one-quarter of the full 17,000-user population—and handles 1.6 million transactions daily.

“Until we migrate fully to the integrated environment, the legacy users are maintaining their separate, disparate types of databases,” O’Connor says. “There have been a number of conflicts, and we’ve learned a great deal from that experience.”

Ultimately, LMP will manage $4.5 billion in inventory, process transactions with 50,000 vendors and integrate more than 70 DOD systems. The Army says the 14 current installations complete most transactions in two seconds or less. That entails displaying a new logistics order, along with the supply chain necessary to fill it, all mission product codes and appropriate criticality factors. LMP reports real-time inventory of needed items and lets the item manager send an order confirmation to the logistics officer in the field.

As envisioned, LMP will eventually integrate procurement with asset and financial management, depot maintenance, manufacturing, requisition processing and long-term supply planning for up to 6 million items and $40 billion a year in goods and services. If the project meets its goals, LMP will manage a supply chain involving 50,000 vendors and up to 1 million logistics customers.

“We’re turning a corner, we’re live, and we want to expand LMP nationally,” O’Connor says.

Meanwhile, another change of leadership recently occurred. Col. David Coker left the post of LMP chief in early August, and Col. Scott Lambert took over as the new program manager.

At the Air Force Logistics Management Agency, Capt. Kevin Dawson is waiting to help roll about 500 legacy systems for maintenance, supply and transportation into the future Expeditionary Combat Support System, which will use an Oracle ERP platform.

“Our Integrated Maintenance Data System and several other systems already feed into the Reliability and Maintainability Information System,” says Dawson, who heads the Aircraft Plans and Programs Section at Maxwell Air Force Base’s Gunter Annex, Ala. “ReMIS carries out about 3.1 million transactions per month and has interfaces to 29 other systems, some for contractors, some for Navy support and some for coalition partners.”

The problem is that the various ReMIS feeder programs can’t update one another, “so it’s like a stool with a leg missing,” Dawson says. “But ECSS will update the entire network, which should improve data integrity and reduce the workload.”

ECSS

John Emerson
Running at 14 locations, LMP has 4,000 users and completes 1.6 million transactions a day — typically in two seconds or less, the Army’s Diane O’Connor says.

will form part of the service’s future Global Combat Support System-AF, whose development is budgeted at about $20 million per year for the rest of this decade. Meanwhile, the Air Force has set a wireless course to make the most of the Integrated Maintenance Data System as it currently exists.

Pace Setter
“The Air Force is leading the other services using similar architectures,” says Mike Horn, director of wireless programs for contractor Telos Corp. of Ashburn, Va., which has installed wireless LANs at most U.S. air bases over the last nine years.

According to Telos representatives, the Air Force typically has spent $300,000 to $1 million per base for a wireless infrastructure supporting aircraft maintenance. That price includes the wireless devices; electrical, communications and security equipment and software; wireless LAN management; and labor.

At some bases the 54-Mbps WLANs extend campuswide, serving not only logistics users but also offices and classrooms. Horn cites Langley Air Force Base, Va., as having one of the largest WLANs.

At the shared-bandwidth sites, up to 200 users can simultaneously access the point-of-maintenance bandwidth, depending on the priority of specific functions. For example, “you generally can’t check your e-mail on the flight line,” says Telos’ chief wireless architect, Rob Smith. The wireless range is 300 to 1,500 feet, and outside that perimeter there is no network access.

IMDS logisticians use tablet and handheld computers with magnesium-alloy cases that are considered ruggedized at a commercial level, though not Tempest-shielded against electromagnetic emissions. Smith said Telos recommends particular brands and devices depending on the required durability.

Some users need large units that can display detailed photos and images. Warehouse staff members carry wireless handhelds to scan parts and print tickets. All the wireless transmissions are considered sensitive but unclassified and encrypted under Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2.

The wireless transmissions are secured under DOD Directive 8100.2, which sets policy for the use of commercial wireless devices, services and technologies in the Global Information Grid. The directive promotes joint interoperability and calls for development and use of a knowledge-management process for departmentwide sharing of open-standard wireless capabilities, vulnerabilities and risk-mitigation strategies.

With IMDS, “the Air Force consolidated logistics data to a single database repository,” Telos’ Smith says. “The users enter their data through the wireless portal, and it all rides back to the wired net,” DOD’s Non-Classified IP Router Network. From there, the data goes into Oracle Corp. databases in Oklahoma City and at other Air Force logistics sites.

If, for example, a propeller part looks defective to a crew chief, a flight line technician with a wireless unit enters a request for repair or a new part. A second-level logistics user processes the order through IMDS over the NIPRnet. A warehouse user scans to find where the part is available and puts it into a truck for delivery if it is larger than the small parts typically warehoused on a base.

“It’s working well,” says Smith. In the works are requests for future enhancements, such as requests to integrate text queries with video for advanced troubleshooting. “Telemaintenance is becoming a discipline just like telemedicine,” he says.

To learn about GCSS: Go to www.defensesystems.com and enter 121 in the Quickfind search box. For BEA 3.O specs, enter 120.

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