Enabling an Information-Driven Battlespace Through Net-Centric Logistics

To address the supply chain challenges facing military clients, HP has developed an information capability framework that enables visibility and the fusion of strategic and tactical logistics. In this Q&A, Greg Deabler, HP client industry executive for Defense in the Global Government Industry Group, discusses how HP helps military clients around the world bridge the gap between the “last tactical mile” and the broader supply chain through Net-Centric Logistics.

Q: WHAT CHALLENGES ARE DEFENSE CLIENTS FACING TODAY IN LOGISTICS?

A: Defense supply chains are like no other. They serve far-away, always-moving and remote customers performing combat and other high-risk operations in harsh conditions. There is little to no supply and event visibility. There are strict “never out” conditions for thousands of mission essential items. This environment is commonly referred to as the “last tactical mile.”

The commercial equivalent to this would be having a moving and limited point-of-sale. Imagine a large global retailer not having a bar code scanner at the end of the checkout line and not knowing what has been sold and what needs re-supplying. This is the “heart” of most supply chains – the beat that paces all else. Supply chains need either real or predicted demand signals to pace synchronization with the supply side. And of course, the non-financial “price” of supply chain failure is quite high in defense.

The challenges of the last tactical mile are aggravated by the complexity of the underlying end-to-end supply chain systems. Like commercial supply chains, most military supply chains are challenged in synchronization and speed by their own structure. The end-to-end defense supply chain – particularly that of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) – is a composite of individual organizations with their own processes and systems that optimize their input to their output – not the whole system. To their credit, they are beginning to build enterprise resource planning (ERP) and integrated data environments, shoring up automated identification technologies (AIT) and infrastructure, and even joining up commands and fusing processes, but there is still much to do when you step back and look at the end-to-end picture of net-centric operations.

In the near term, coalition militaries are faced with a wave of equipment coming back from heavy use in today’s battlespace. This equipment needs not only maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), but in many cases will be replaced by newer versions of the same equipment or by different equipment that will deliver new warfighting capabilities. Depots and industry alike will be challenged to provide the necessary capacity to efficiently and effectively handle this surge.

So, the never-ending challenge becomes one of visibility and the exploitation of that visibility into synchronization and speed. Throw in the fact that militaries continue to rely more heavily on industry and joint and coalition forces, and this challenge rages on exponentially.

Q: HOW DOES HP ADDRESS THESE CHALLENGES FOR CLIENTS?

A: To bridge last tactical mile challenges with the broader supply chain, we have an integrated framework of information capabilities that underpin a modernized and collaborative logistics network. This network is tightly orchestrated with emerging net-centric operations – the dynamic information-intensive battlespace. Together, we call this net-centric logistics.

It is a compilation of the HP global defense logistics capabilities, our differentiating experience with commercial and defense original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and transportation and third-party logistics providers. Net-centric logistics addresses two painful long-standing issues: visibility and the fusion of strategic logistics with tactical logistics. As a military commander put it, logistics “is increasingly becoming less about moving stuff and more about moving information about stuff.” Think of the FedEx model: we value online or even mobile in-transit tracking information almost as much as the physical arrival of the shipment. Consequently, logistics information increasingly is an integral part of the military's joint operational picture.

We’ve developed a demonstration of these capabilities, called the Defense Visual Operations Center (DVOC), or fusion center, that provides role-based information, supply chain intelligence, collaboration and situational awareness across the domains in the context of a mock joint forces mission with a keen focus on warfighter support. It showcases the benefits of HP and its strategic industry partners’ experience in mission-critical applications and infrastructure modernization, system integration and secure networking. It shows that net-centric logistics is truly about sensing and responding to the battlespace. It also demonstrates that while technologies can go a long way in providing powerful visibility, intelligence and collaboration, the redefinition of roles, processes, and how decisions are made are also central in this quest.

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We then couple these enterprise IT services with operational know-how. For example, HP provides maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), logistics and financial IT services as a part of an overall aftermarket solution for Rolls-Royce and their joint ventures around the world. HP also leverages aerospace and defense industry best practices to improve productivity, improve component turn time by 50 to 75 percent and reduce work-in-process and inventory by 45 percent.

These are only some of the challenges HP addresses for our logistics clients.

Q: HOW HAS HP HELPED CLIENTS ENHANCE THEIR NET-CENTRIC LOGISTICS CAPABILITIES?

A: For more than 12 years now, HP has been the DoD’s partner in medical supply chain logistics, providing IT services from factory-to-foxhole. On the retail side, HP provides software development for radio frequency identification (RFID) and systems integration and engineering for the Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support (DMLSS), an end-to-end information system providing medical logistics support to the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in the United States and abroad. The system is currently deployed in more than 170 Army, Navy and Air Force medical facilities worldwide. On the wholesale side, HP provides e-commerce, Web-based and system support to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and prime vendors to enable situation awareness, business intelligence, distribution and pricing, and demand and order management.

A global defense company has turned to HP to help deploy an enhanced Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution, consisting of hardware, software and support services to support the design and manufacture of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. This collaborative workstation environment helped to integrate design, engineering and manufacturing information at substantial cost savings to the company and to the program.

For the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces), HP developed an information platform that created visibility of materiel and assets along a supply chain that ended in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. We integrated disparate maintenance information sources that streamlined visibility and the maintenance and logistics functions, allowing the Bundeswehr to effectively transition from a materiel-oriented operational structure to a capability-oriented one.

For the Ministry of Defence (MoD0) in the United Kingdom, HP supports the battlespace environment where we fuse the data of the battlespace, weapons system and enemy targets, and overlay that information on military maps to provide a rich operating picture based on the needs of the user. We are able to provide the MoD with situational awareness and decision planning aids, while also giving them secure message handling and a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for logistics. HP also helped develop the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII), which provides a foundational, secure communications layer to a net-centric information platform, of which the logistics domain is a key element.

For the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), HP also helps build critical-enabling network infrastructure which applies Internet technology to everything from performing routine administrative tasks to facilitating global communications and logistics during wartime. This program ensures the secure and reliable transmission of voice, video and data information worldwide, and helps the Navy and Marine Corps meet critical objectives, such as enhancing network security, ensuring interoperability across commands and with other services, facilitating knowledge-sharing around the globe and increasing productivity.

These examples touch on some of the essential building blocks for net-centric logistics.

Q: HOW DOES THE WARFIGHTER BENEFIT FROM NET-CENTRIC LOGISTICS?

A: At the end of the day, the warfighter always has and always will want the right things at the right time at the right place. Those are the simple orders. Further capabilities and benefits are unleashed when this is achieved in a sustained, predictable fashion amidst an array of circumstances, events and environments.

Being agile in a dynamic battlefield has its competitive advantages, including real-time eyes on what is available, knowing when supplies and assets will arrive, flexibility to keep moving and have logistics re-routed, and an ability to change, collaborate and meet requirements dynamically. Pace and timing are critical and to set fact-based expectations to military units is also essential to operations tempo. Automating maintenance, predicting soon-to-break components or in-transit visibility become less burdensome. Giving back one or two hours a day to warfighters and commanders is a huge benefit. Net-centric logistics takes the worry away, enabling the warfighter to focus on the mission at hand.

Our clients continue to seek force multiplier capabilities that shift the balance “tail to tooth” or “factory to foxhole” by maximizing warfighter performance, while also being more efficient. As we’ve learned in the commercial world, a lean supply chain can also be a mean one and that is what net-centric logistics is about: an agile supply chain.

Q: WHAT ARE SOME LESSONS LEARNED FROM HP Enterprise Services' EXPERIENCE IN THE LOGISTICS FIELD?

A: One of the interesting trends HP has faced is the importance of data and data quality in supply chains. Data is an Achilles’ heel in all of this. All organizations to some degree have a data dilemma because data is often inaccurate, inaccessible and not standardized. Because data is very process-driven and all processes are driven by humans to some degree, there is too good a probability for error or variations. These errors ultimately trickle down to the databases and can cause a breakdown in the fusion of the data.

For example, in standing up a fusion center for one of our clients, our team was asked to extract data from their current systems and present it to users. We found that the data quality wasn’t good because it was incomplete or it was poorly formatted. Data management provides structure and process, and without it, you get what you have, which is a hairball of data. Clients are finding that they have not been managing data strategically.

HP has capabilities to help clients manage their data. We deploy and manage massive data warehouses, business intelligence capabilities and work with a variety of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based solutions. HP has the tools and engineers to help clients prepare for data fusion, including data extract, transform and load (ETL) capabilities.

Q: WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO IMPLEMENT THE NET-CENTRIC LOGISTICS CAPABILITIES?

A: Net-centric logistics is a framework that is essentially a “fabric” of sense-and-respond capabilities to set up an information-intensive supply chain with four primary layers. The foundational layer is the core infrastructure, including a secure communications network, AIT and a portfolio of existing legacy applications.

The second layer, called the back plane, reveals and correlates logistics data from the supply chain and AIT. It does the heavy lifting involved with interfaces, data transformation, translation and message management. This layer is then managed by a third logistics enterprise services layer, or cross plane, that houses enterprise logistics content, business rules provides decision support, modeling and simulation, diagnostics and health management. It essentially packages and enhances logistics data and value in context of a mission.

The fourth and final layer, called the front plane, connects users to information and provides the common operating picture (COP) and provides overall command and control, visualization and situational awareness. Each layer is tied together through a SOA or fabric. Without SOA, there is no leverage, no service-orientation and therefore great manual expense is incurred to just meet simple, minimum objectives.

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In order to stand all these layers up, our defense logistics clients will need a well-defined strategic plan or operational vision that entails the requisite transformation enablers of strong leadership, governance, change management and communications.

Let’s take an example that brings all this together. I mentioned AIT. This is where emerging technologies like RFID hold the potential to unleash compelling new visibility into supply movements and supply chain events. However, putting RFID chips everywhere does not give you net-centric logistics. This capability must be put in context, integrated to the enterprise and always tied to the mission and warfighter. Consequently we encourage the design of AIT solutions to begin with command and control and decision support objectives, more specifically the user. This will then help dictate the deployment and effectiveness of AIT.

Fusing together an information supply chain is very difficult yet quite feasible. I often share with our military clients a benchmark from an industry far away from theirs but eerily similar in capability: the stock market. If you look at the stock market’s information supply chain, it is composed of suppliers and buyers, they have a framework of a standard set of data, automated transactions, knowledge networks to sense and to respond, self-healing and self-correcting mechanisms for incremental improvement, abundant channels and brokers of services, and governance for global interoperability. All this produces proven characteristics of a healthy network: many users, a large amount of volume and sustained long-term performance.

Q: WHAT WOULD PEOPLE BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT THE LOGISTICS EXPERIENCE OF HP?

A: For starters, it may be an unknown fact that HP is the fastest-growing commercial firm in the Defense News “Top 100” global defense market over the last five years. We are a proven source of commercial best-practice for our global military clients to draw from. In this regard, people may be surprised to learn that HP enables some of the largest, asset-intensive supply chain networks on the planet such as global airlines, automotive manufacturers and aerospace and defense firms.

With the airlines, HP developed an airline industry SOA that allows global airlines to be agile with their markets and deliver new services while leveraging their current systems. The airline SOA extracts key operations data from these core systems, consumes data as a service to operations management, key personnel and, in some cases, even self-service customers. Being able to get rapid operations intelligence and visibility through their existing legacy environment is a timely imperative in the defense logistics community, and that’s precisely the type of capability we’ve deployed for our large commercial clients.

Q: GOING FORWARD, WHAT WILL HP FOCUS ON FOR NET-CENTRIC LOGISTICS?

A: We will continue to not only share our experience with defense clients but also continue to listen to their ever-changing needs and priorities. We take pride in the fact that we’ve designed our net-centric logistics offering based on an intensive dialogue and spiral demonstration with both our existing and prospective clients. We too need to be agile and will continue to enhance our framework.

Another focus area is to continue to embed and enhance the compelling capabilities from our HP Agility Alliance and solution partners. We are closely working with Cisco, Microsoft, Tibco, SAP and Oracle around the globe with aspects of this framework.

Net-centric logistics takes advantage of the HP Agile Application Architecture (A3) for Global Defense. This framework is based on best practices, best-of-breed solutions and an open-architected SOA framework. As new technology standards emerge, we can quickly pass this on to our defense clients via this framework. We roll up our sleeves and really make agility happen on behalf of our clients’ missions. And we’ve invested heavily to engineer our company this way by connecting strategy with agile execution.

After all, military logistics of the future is all about being agile.