The intent of the Revolution in Military Logistics (RML) is to "transform Army logistics into a distribution-based system that substitutes logistics velocity for logistics mass to provide the right stuff at the right place, at the right time, and at the best value." To have a genuine revolution, there must be dramatic change within the three functional domains of the RML: Technology Application and Acquisition Agility, Force Projection, and Force Sustainment. As today's Army transitions through Army XXI to the Army After Next, many logistics modernization concepts and initiatives will need to be implemented, particularly within the functional domain of Force Sustainment.
One Army initiative supporting Force Sustainment will modernize the sustainment maintenance portion of the Army's total maintenance mission to meet the challenges of future logistics environments. This initiative is Integrated Sustainment Maintenance (ISM).
Changing Conditions Lead to ISM
The most important factor driving the need to modernize sustainment maintenance is the ongoing doctrinal shift from a forward-deployed Army to a largely continental United States (CONUS)-based, power projection Army—Force XXI. The maintenance concept for this future force is based on the need to support technologically advanced units on battlefields characterized by large operational areas and nonlinear frontlines. An additional factor is the growing need to respond to support and stability operations, such as nation-building, disaster relief, and peacekeeping missions. A flexible, responsive, and tailored sustainment maintenance system is essential to supporting the future Army.
The ISM concept emerged from a review of the current logistics systems designed to support Force XXI operations through to the Army After Next. The doctrinal shift and the experience of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (ODS) demonstrated the need for a sustaining maintenance system that can respond rapidly to a full range of combat missions, from high-intensity conflicts to contingency operations such as Grenada and Panama.
The Army Logistics Integration Agency (LIA), under direction of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Department of the Army (DA), assembled a study team in the early 1990's to develop a sustainment maintenance concept that would meet future Army needs. The development of that concept was based on the supposition that the Army will be operating low-density, high-technology weapons with reduced resources and a smaller, CONUS-based force in an era of regional conflicts requiring rapid deployment. [This article addresses the "corporate," or strategic, level of ISM. An article by Major David Funk, "Understanding Integrated Sustainment Maintenance," in the January-February 1998 issue of Army Logistician, examines ISM at the "operator" level.]
Current Sustainment Maintenance System
Management of the current Army sustainment maintenance structure is fragmented among multiple organizations. Within the Army Materiel Command (AMC), the Industrial Operations Command (IOC) controls depot sustainment maintenance resources, while AMC's commodity-oriented major subordinate commands (MSC's) control national maintenance management activities and national maintenance contractor resources. (However, some depot missions are realigning with their respective AMC MSC's.)
Active component sustainment maintenance resources are managed by the major Army commands (MACOM's). In CONUS, the Forces Command (FORSCOM) and the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) are the principal providers of sustainment maintenance. Outside of CONUS, MACOM's include U.S. Army, Europe (USAREUR), Eighth U.S. Army (EUSA) in Korea, and U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC). In the reserve components, both the Army National Guard (ARNG) and the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) have important sustainment maintenance capabilities and responsibilities.
Under the Total Force concept, the Army has concentrated over 80 percent of its deployable sustainment maintenance manpower in ARNG and USAR units. However, because of historical disparities in assigning weapon systems and equipment, reserve component units often train on second-line equipment. As a result, many reserve component maintenance personnel lack the experience they need to repair the first-line equipment they are expected to support during contingency operations. ODS demonstrated that training in many reserve component units did not match their mobilization missions. DA contractors and installation directorates of logistics (DOL's), which are nondeployable assets under Army doctrine, provide much of the peacetime sustainment maintenance capability.
Lessons Learned From ODS
In many ways, ODS represents the type of operation the Army will be required to carry out in the future. While the overall coalition force mission was accomplished, ODS demonstrated the gap between the current maintenance system and the needs of the future. Here is a summary of the challenges presented by ODS.
An immediate challenge to achieving the rapid response required by ODS was the many parallel management chains involved in sustainment maintenance. This structure meant extensive coordination was needed in ODS to field the sustainment maintenance capability. A combination of active and reserve component general support (GS) maintenance units, Government civilians, and contractors was required to meet the needs of the theater commander. Once in place, some portions of this system continued to experience difficulties. The reason for these difficulties can be traced to gaps between supply, maintenance, and transportation systems and the communications and automation systems that linked them.
Another challenge was the lack of rapidly deployable sustaining maintenance capabilities. AMC personnel and contractors were used to fill the shortage, but it took time to make this happen.
A third challenge was the delay in deploying reserve component sustainment maintenance units. The delay resulted from the lack of unified control over various elements of the Army's maintenance infrastructure. Extensive coordination was needed among U.S. Central Command, AMC, FORSCOM, other MACOM's, ARNG, and USAR to determine the best way to meet the sustainment maintenance needs of the deploying forces. Full integration was never achieved during ODS.
ODS revealed shortfalls in the ability of reserve component sustainment maintenance units to maintain frontline combat systems. Many of these units did not train on first-line equipment and were not ready immediately to support the weapons systems used in ODS. There also were mismatches between the assigned peacetime missions of reserve component maintenance units and the missions they needed to carry out in ODS.
Evolving Army Doctrine
A flexible, responsive maintenance system is required to support high tech Force XXI operations on a battlefield characterized by large areas of operations and nonlinear frontlines. Only combat repairs that can be made quickly will be carried out in the battle zone. Maintenance units attached to maneuver units will make these repairs. Most field maintenance capabilities will be concentrated above the division level and located in the dispersal area. These capabilities constitute forward support maintenance.
The primary mission of forward support maintenance units is to repair broken or battle-damaged equipment and get it back to the combat units. They also provide reinforcing support to combat repair units in the battle zone and logistics area.
Sustainment maintenance is focused on reconstituting combat forces. Generally speaking, sustainment maintenance activities are located at echelons above corps and provide 40- and 50-level maintenance. They support reconstitution by repairing end items, shop replaceable units, and line replaceable units and returning them to frontline units; or by making major repairs, equivalent to overhaul, to support the supply system. These activities can be conducted in the logistics areas in the combat theater or at fixed installations outside the theater of operations.
The changes described in Force XXI doctrine focus on the combat repair and forward maintenance support portions of the system. While overarching maintenance doctrinal changes are being proposed, such as concentrating maintenance support at the division level and combining the 20- and 30-level maintenance activities, those proposals do not address the sustainment maintenance portion of the system. A sustaining maintenance system is needed to complement the changes being made to other levels of the maintenance system. Developing this complementary sustaining maintenance system is the primary goal of ISM.
Budgetary Influences
A new sustaining maintenance concept must deal with the realities of shrinking Department of Defense (DOD) budgets. If past experience is a good indicator, force reductions will hit support forces harder than combat units. The Defense Management Review Decision (DMRD) process already has taken credit for billions of dollars of savings associated with streamlining logistics activities—streamlining that often has yet to be developed or put into practice. In particular, emphasis has been placed on DMRD 927J, which calls for the Services to build and sustain seamless logistics systems.
Assumptions
Development of ISM is based on the following assumptions—
· The evolving doctrinal concepts for projection and sustainment of Force XXI operations are valid for concept development.
· Current maintenance concepts do not provide the best basis for developing logistics support systems and tools for future missions.
· Strategic planning guidance will continue to emphasize a largely CONUS-based, power projection strategy, a limited overseas force presence, and DOD participation in major regional conflicts.
· The Army will remain the proponent for all ground support operations, regardless of the mix of deployed forces.
Overview of ISM Concept
Under the ISM concept, an integrated management structure is being established for all sustainment maintenance above direct support. Sustainment maintenance managers at national, regional, and local levels will be responsible for providing all sustainment maintenance capabilities required by field units, whether in garrison or deployed to support any operational need arising from the Army's global force-projection mission. They will be responsible for setting work loads for active and reserve component sustainment maintenance units; the portions of DOL's that carry out sustainment maintenance in peacetime; Army depots; and, as contracting officers representatives, contractors carrying out maintenance activities under national maintenance contracts. They will assist reserve component sustainment maintenance units by assigning work loads for maintenance training, making mission assignments, and influencing the activation of those units.
Specific functions under the ISM concept will be performed as follows—
· The National Sustainment Maintenance Management (NSMM) Office develops and implements business policies and procedures to provide optimal sustainment maintenance support to Army organizations. Collocated at the IOC, this activity integrates Total Army sustainment maintenance management by linking national, regional, and local sustainment maintenance programs. The NSMM also supports reserve component training and contingency operations and participates in the deliberate planning process with AMC's logistics support elements (LSE's).
· MACOM control cells provide oversight of ISM operations by using ISM data to support management decisions on budget, infrastructure, and mission priorities. Their primary focus is to assess cost savings and cost avoidance, track ISM performance data, monitor inventory management, and support the budgeting process. MACOM control cells are currently operational at FORSCOM, TRADOC, the National Guard Bureau, the Office of the Chief of the Army Reserve, and USAREUR. Fielding of the final cells in EUSA and USARPAC is in progress.
· Regional and theater sustainment maintenance management (RSMM/TSMM) offices manage the execution of sustainment maintenance requirements in a designated region or theater. They oversee local sustainment maintenance operations and evaluate their performance. Two RSMM offices are operational, one in the East Region at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and the other in the West Region at Fort Hood, Texas. The TSMM office in Europe was fielded in fiscal year 1998, and fielding of the TSMM offices in the Pacific and Korea is in progress. Upon completion, there will be five regions worldwide.
· Local sustainment maintenance management (LSMM) offices manage the workloading of multiple Army sustainment maintenance units and activities. Typically, the LSMM office will be collocated with and support the materiel maintenance officer within an installation or activity staff or, for the National Guard, at a state surface maintenance management office. A total of 35 LSMM offices, 26 in CONUS and 9 OCONUS, will be in place by the end of fiscal year 1999. Four ARNG aviation classification and repair activity depots will be incorporated under ISM and will act as LSMM offices.
· Associate maintenance activities (AMA's) participate in ISM as work centers for designated LSMM offices. In addition to executing their local work loads, AMA's perform regional ISM and national work as assigned. AMA's report work they evacuate to other ISM sites and receive from other installations to their designated LSMM offices for control and tracking. MACOM's designate which installations they want to function as AMA's; the work centers are maintenance activities within the MACOM's existing installation infrastructure.
Wartime and Mobilization Operations
Under the ISM concept, the theater commander determines wartime requirements and transmits them through the theater support command to the deployed AMC LSE and its NSMM cell. The NSMM cell assists in determining the mix of resources needed to meet the requirements and coordinates assignment of resources to the theater of operations. Most of these resources are assigned to the theater maintenance activities located in the logistics area of the theater. As needed, the NSMM cell assists in the retrograde of unserviceable reparables by identifying sources of repair with the appropriate capacity and capability for those items.
Peacetime Operations
The NSMM Office integrates sustainment maintenance for the Total Army. It coordinates operations with both local-retail and national-wholesale maintenance providers. The primary interface at the retail level is through the RSMM/TSMM offices and their respective LSMM offices using MACOM installations' maintenance activities. The interface at the wholesale level is with the AMC MSC's, which use depot, contractor, and forward repair activity sustainment maintenance support to make major modifications or overhaul equipment to support the supply system.
The RSMM/TSMM offices coordinate all ISM management activities within their respective areas of responsibility through the LSMM offices. In addition to maintenance units that are assigned to installations, the RSMM/TSMM offices develop regional support centers to provide support more efficiently. The LSMM offices manage the daily production of ISM lines (those items selected for maintenance under ISM) at their regional centers of excellence (COE's). A COE acts as a central location where a particular ISM line is repaired for all customers within a given region. Using the COE concept, GS maintenance activities are able to maximize their repair capabilities.
A current initiative that will assist the NSMM Office and MSC's is the Maintenance Contract Data Base (MCDB). The prototype system is designed to establish visibility of Army maintenance contracts (tactical and combat equipment, wholesale and retail levels) at the national level to consolidate contract requirements, track maintenance services and costs, and maximize national- and regional-level repair capacities and capabilities. It will make information available to any authorized Internet user equipped with a commercial, Java-enabled browser. MCDB will establish a functional bridge between the traditional procurement data administrators and individual maintenance and logistics managers.
Organizational Concept
Headquarters AMC is the principal Army logistics organization, and the NSMM Office is an element of that organization. At full implementation of ISM, the NSMM Office's focus will include the Total Army-level integration of the day-to-day operations of contractors, depots, GS maintenance units, and other Government-owned facilities and activities performing sustaining maintenance operations.
Relationship With the Reserve Components
As indicated above, the NSMM Office coordinates sustainment maintenance required to support deployments and contingencies. This support includes assisting the theater support command and LSE in determining which reserve component sustainment maintenance capabilities are required and when they are needed to support the theater commander. The NSMM Office coordinates mobilization and deployment requests for active and reserve component sustainment maintenance units with FORSCOM, ARNG, and USAR.
The NSMM Office is responsible for coordinating the availability of components for maintenance training. It also recommends mission assignments and equipment allocations for active and reserve component sustainment maintenance units. It may recommend changes in the mix of active and reserve component capabilities and may suggest realignment of missions for these units to meet the Army's evolving needs.
The NSMM Office plays an active role in coordinating the maintenance training of reserve component sustainment maintenance units. It works closely with the ARNG and USAR chains of command to identify maintenance training requirements for them and to track the ability of each unit to carry out its sustainment maintenance mission. The NSMM Office assists in providing maintenance training opportunities for these units, as needed, at depots, contractor-operated maintenance facilities, DOL's, active component sustainment maintenance units, or other maintenance activities so they can fulfill their role in the integrated sustainment maintenance system.
Asset Visibility Through Automation
At the heart of GS reparable management within the ISM program is a computer system known as the Executive Management Information System (EMIS). EMIS is used at LSMM, RSMM, and NSMM offices; each participating MACOM also has EMIS. EMIS uses a relational data base to collect and consolidate data from various logistics Standard Army Management Information Systems and MACOM-unique maintenance management systems. It displays these data in a format that is easy to read and understand. EMIS allows LSMM, RSMM, and NSMM offices to monitor maintenance and supply trends and adjust production as needed. With EMIS, logistics managers can make informed decisions. In the future, this ISM automated functionality will be integrated into the Global Combat Support System-Army.
Testing and Implementation
To test the ISM concept, the Army conducted an ISM proof of principle (ISM PoP) from November 1993 through July 1994 at III Corps installations. III Corps established LSMM offices (collocated with the DOL's) at Fort Hood; Fort Carson, Colorado; and Fort Riley, Kansas, and an RSMM office at Fort Hood's 13th Corps Support Command (COSCOM). NSMM functions were simulated. Near the end of the ISM PoP, the Texas Army National Guard joined the ISM structure as a maintenance activity of the Fort Hood LSMM Office. AMC representatives assisted in establishing centralized workloading procedures at the RSMM and LSMM offices. In addition to producing significant reductions in retail acquisitions through better "repair versus buy" decisions, the ISM PoP demonstrated the potential for significant production rate improvements, reductions in repair turn-around times, and net savings through the establishment of regional repair COE's.
At the conclusion of the ISM PoP, the FORSCOM Commander, citing ISM's efficiencies and improvements, directed that the ISM PoP procedures continue under corps-managed regional repair programs (CMRRP), initially in III Corps and subsequently in the XVIII Airborne Corps.
The III Corps CMRRP bridged the gap from the end of the ISM PoP until the more comprehensive ISM-Expanded (ISM-X) demonstration. Working in an inter-MACOM environment, AMC and LIA conducted the ISM-X demonstration from July through December 1995. The purposes of this demonstration were to determine the feasibility of multi-MACOM ISM operations, establish and evaluate NSMM functions, and increase participation by ARNG units. The ISM-X demonstration expanded the ISM PoP framework by adding another FORSCOM installation, Fort Irwin, California; two TRADOC installations, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Bliss, Texas; and two Kansas Army National Guard sites. The demonstration illustrated that ISM effectively crosses MACOM lines to produce truly integrated operations and validated ISM's potential for cost savings and cost avoidance.
After these successful field tests of the ISM concept and methodology, the Army leadership approved ISM implementation in May 1996.
ISM Business Process Improvements
Through implementation of ISM, the Army will—
• Enhance its responsiveness to the sustainment maintenance requirements generated during peacetime, contingency, and wartime conditions by integrating local, regional, and national sustainment maintenance operations under a single structure.
• Achieve economies of scale by establishing regional repair centers, where repairs for selected items within the region are consolidated at single repair facilities.
• Realize price and production rate efficiencies by introducing competition for sustainment maintenance work loads.
• Increase the visibility of Army sustainment maintenance capabilities and capacities through a developmental automated management information system.
• Reduce procurements of components and end items through improved repair versus buy decisions.
• Enhance reserve component maintenance unit proficiency through closer integration of sustainment maintenance training and synchronization of resources.
ISM will be a major step toward the Army's ability to implement a single, seamless logistics system and position the sustainment maintenance structure to meet the needs of Force XXI and on to the Army After Next.
Regardless of the thrust and direction, ISM will continue to be the sustainment maintenance component of any current or future logistics initiative in the foreseeable future. For more information on ISM, access the Army Materiel Command home page at www.amc.army.mil/dcs_logistics/lg-ism. ALOG
Bruce Koedding is a logistics analyst working for Battelle Memorial Institute on contract to the Army Materiel Command for the Integrated Sustainment Program Manager's Office.