Marines Target Logistics For Upgrade

"As we migrate the Marine Corps to commercial processes and practices, we are concurrently modernizing and migrating our supporting information technology to enable those new processes," Ferris says.

This is particularly important as the United States ramps up for a possible war with Iraq. Consider this scenario: Troops are in combat and suddenly they run out of bullets. Obviously, the consequences are much more significant than if Wal-Mart runs out of Sponge Bob dolls.

"If a commercial outfit doesn't implement a package exactly right, their inventory costs are going to rise a little bit. They may fail to exploit some markets. But if we mess up the Marines' supply chain, there might not be the right bullet to engage the enemy," says Chris Davey, senior vice president at Sapient, a systems integrator based in Cambridge, Mass. "The implications are profound."

Sapient is one of several subcontractors on the Systems Realignment & Categorization/Consolidation (SRAC) project. Stanley Associates, Alexandria, Va., is the prime contractor, responsible for managing the relationships and the project. Systems integrator BearingPoint (the former KPMG Consulting), another key subcontractor, is rolling out the Oracle 11i application suite, which was designated the core packaged application solution for providing an integrated logistics network. Enterprise-integration firm Labblee, Cambridge, Mass., has undertaken the complex data rationalization, and AT&T Government Solutions runs the managed-network backbone. Gartner Consulting, Stamford, Conn., is helping define the best products for SRAC by matching best practices in the commercial sector.

Having already streamlined a number of processes, such as procurement, fulfillment, distribution and inventory management using Oracle 11i, the Marines are well into an effort that will ultimately take years to complete. The challenge facing the Marines is no different than any other branch of the military, government agency or even commercial enterprise.

The Marines looked to some of the pillars of the commercial market, such as Wal-Mart, because of their best practices in managing data, says Boyd Scroggins, Sapient's vice president for the public-service sector.

"If you look at the commercial market, a lot of what we learned about supply chains we learned about from the military in the 1940s," Scroggins notes. "The commercial world took that and over 60 years, has refined and enhanced it and moved a lot of it forward," he says. "The government, on the other hand, while it has made advances, clearly hasn't kept up that pace. This initiative is to take the best practices out of the commercial world, apply what's unique about the military and combine that together for this initiative."

Lots of Data

To put SRAC in perspective, it is the systems-integration component of the Marines' Integrated Logistics Capability. IRC is the Marines' contribution to the Focused Logistics effort, which is identified by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a key element in the Department of Defense's Joint Vision 2020 (JV 2020) framework. Formalized three years ago, JV 2020 is intended to provide a common informational and operational model for all branches of the military while letting each exploit its unique capabilities. Much of the work on SRAC got under way three years ago, once funds were finally made available. At a conference last fall, Ferris reported that some key milestones had been reached, although there is still much work to be done.

With 222 systems, many of which are homegrown legacy applications running on 30-year-old mainframes, the key problem is the data can't be exchanged with other systems. That leads to overlapping data; the information basically is stovepiped.

That can lead to a lot of useless-and erroneous-information being generated. Data may be updated in one system more routinely than another, hence the overlapping and inconsistent information. "If we can fix the data problem in the Marine Corps, which we are, we will have accomplished most of our [key] goals," Ferris says.

For example, Scroggins compares the process of a civilian getting his or her car repaired with that of a soldier bringing in a Humvee, a large automobile with tank-like tires. The civilian typically drops the vehicle off at the garage in the morning, and the repair is done that day. The Humvee process is not so cut-and-dry, Scroggins notes.

"In the military, when you take your Humvee in for service, you have to know what parts you need to order. Then you have to manage when those parts get there," Scroggins says. "Plus, you have to talk to the mechanics. When you ask, 'When is it going to be done?' they'll [tell you], 'Take a number, go park that thing out there, and come back and check on it later.'"

Modernizing that process means changing the operational architecture and coming up with a data-integration plan that correlates with that architecture. "We were doing things in functional stovepipes," Ferris says.

Those stovepipes are now being consolidated. To do that, the USMC is retiring as many overlapping and costly legacy systems as possible, through a process that has been under way for roughly 30 months. Ultimately, during the next several years, the Marine Corps anticipates drastically reducing the number of systems (many are mandated for use and therefore can't be decommissioned). For the remaining systems, Scroggins says Sapient is building connectors that enable the different systems to share and synchronize data, using XML, HTML and a variety of other custom interfaces. He says Sapient and BearingPoint developers are working closely together.

A key factor in determining which systems to migrate vs. retire is cost, and that includes licensing and maintaining the applications and other operational costs, such as running a help desk for a specific system.

Deciding What To Migrate

Factored into the decision of what to migrate is the cost of the new system, and the need to match the user requirements of all the applications being migrated.

"If I've got five groups using five individual systems, and I decide to standardize on one, I can't just eliminate the four-I have to take the one standardized one and build the critical functions to satisfy these other users. Then I have to license it," Ferris says. The ROI is a critical factor in making a recommendation, he adds. "So, whether it will be some mix of unique systems, the punch line is to simplify the portfolio," Ferris says.

Another critical factor that comes into play is systems that interface with other branches of the armed forces. For example, the Army handles the inventory management of ammunition, so the logistics and supply-chain databases of all the branches need to correlate with one other.

Now, with many of the decisions made, Ferris is moving on to a yet-to-be determined assignment within the Marine Corps. Sapient's Scroggins says of the 222 systems they started with last year, 106 remain. Of those, only 30 are owned by the Marine Corps, and 76 are jointly owned by the Marines, Air Force, Army and Navy.

Earlier this month, 36 systems were retired and 80 were pending. "The objective is that these systems will be phased out, and they will be replaced by these new state-of-the-art, commercial, off-the-shelf systems-Oracle being a perfect example," Scroggins says.

While the process, which will take several years to complete, will ultimately reduce the cost and put more Marines into more important functions, the key goal is to improve the flow of information in the field.

"It's not a financially driven initiative; it is about providing world-class support to that fighting unit," Scroggins says.

Already, the USMC sees deploying wireless devices in the field, possibly using a to-be-determined infrastructure. Who knows, in a few years from now, maybe the IT folks at Wal-Mart will check up on what the Marines are doing. While some of the information may be classified, chances are the Marines will return the favor.