Military Logistics Archives - Tapestry Solutions

How Load Planning Optimization Software Saves Time & Money – and Reduces Risks in Today’s Volatile Supply Chain

September 20, 2018

As today’s supply chains become increasing complex and volatile, having a sophisticated load planning solution is no longer an option – it’s a necessity. Embarkation specialists are constantly challenged with last-minute cargo changes, and they must respond quickly and efficiently to meet schedules and keep costs down.

However, without an automated system in place, logistics personnel must painstakingly re-calculate the balance, distribution and loading sequence for the cargo stowage. This laborious, manual process can result in costly delays and wreak havoc on the bottom line.

Tapestry Solutions, a Boeing Company, has addressed these challenges with the Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) and its commercial derivative, GOLDesp Load Planner. In the process, Tapestry’s customers are saving millions annually.

WHAT IS ICODES?
ICODES – designated as the Single Load Planning Capability (SLPC) for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) – is an intelligent software platform that provides near real-time planning and tracking of cargo stowage for ships, aircraft, railcars, trucks and yards.

ICODES automates processes for multimodal load planning, ensures better space utilization, and improves supply chain performance in support of the military’s deployment and distribution operations.

ICODES interfaces with multiple cargo documentation systems, allowing users to easily exchange and interpret global cargo movement plans throughout the enterprise. ICODES also sends alerts that notify users of violations in a load plan or estimation. In addition, ICODES optimizes logistics operations for the day-to-day management of transportation terminals, and provides predictive analysis for future operations.

In the detailed description below, learn why ICODES has served as the U.S. military’s #1 load planning platform for decades –and how the same technology is assisting Tapestry’s commercial customers today.

THE SUPPLY CHAIN CHALLENGE
Transporting military assets involves moving a vast amount of cargo around the globe – everything from vehicles, weapon systems, ammunition to communication assets, fuel and food supplies – by land, air and sea. It also involves the staging of military personnel.

Managing all the variables is extremely complex in the theater of war. Logistics personnel face uncertainty, threats and information saturation on a daily basis. The load planning process typically involves several modes of transportation, last-minute cargo changes and hazardous conditions.

With continuous information changes and problems that arise, commanders need access to timely and accurate information – actionable data they can easily understand – as well as complete situational awareness.

Decision-makers require a transportation management solution that provides in-transit visibility, speed, extensive documentation accuracy, security, and above all else, automatic reasoning and analysis capabilities.

In the commercial domain, shippers also require supply chain visibility and automation to meet the demands of their customers. Elsewhere in the private sector, other entities have increasingly rigorous lifecycle requirements beyond, but closely related to, shipping – tracking parts and completing other tasks.

A FRAMEWORK FOR MILITARY LOADING AND MORE
ICODES provides the military with a flexible, modular, load planning solution that features automatic reasoning and analysis capabilities. Built with intelligent software agents, ICODES has provided the framework for U.S. military load planning operations for over 20 years.

ICODES first became the system of record for the U.S. Army’s ship load planning operations in 1997, and by 2001, the U.S. Marine Corps came onboard. The U.S. Air Force adopted ICODES in 2015, and in parallel, the functionality of ICODES progressively widened to include rail and then aircraft.

Today, ICODES serves as the DoD’s joint program of record for multimodal (air, ship, rail and truck) global deployments. Approximately 25,000 U.S. military user accounts around the globe have access to ICODES.

ICODES remains responsive to the dynamic logistics environment for its end users today, and continues to evolve to meet user requirements well beyond this decade. Recent enhancements include the delivery of an Initial Operational Capability for a Sea Service Deployment Module (SSDM) for ICODES software v7.1. The SSDM enhancement provides the U.S. Navy and Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) with a common operating picture for managing cargo and personnel movements via ICODES.

THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT
With ICODES technology, Tapestry calculates that the U.S. defense department is achieving annual sustainment cost savings of more than $10 million annually. These efficiencies are derived from its Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment, as well as its internal knowledge-base, intelligent software agents, and the automation of load planning task sequences.

As a result, ICODES has reduced the time to prepare load plans by 50% or more. In addition, users have access to myriad capabilities – all on a single platform – made possible with the SOA environment design principles (e.g., its standard API and “reusable” services).

The SOA infrastructure provides a highly modular, flexible platform that allows users to easily add new web applications and services, including legacy applications. This agile architecture provides a cost-effective way to add new capabilities to an enterprise-level system, for instance, without causing disruption to existing business processes within the system.

COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS
Encouraged by U.S. military’s returns on investment, ICODES technology has further been delivered to non-DoD customers as GOLDesp Load Planner and GOLDesp Terminal Manager commercial variants. Customers include the Royal Australian Navy, Royal Australian Air Force, Lithuania and NATO (Hungary) and Heavy Airlift Wing. These two commercial modules, which are fully compatible with ICODES, will be also be delivered to other nations’ defense forces over the next few months.

Tapestry’s customer base for non-defense operations is also diverse and expanding. In the public sector, the U.S. National Science Foundation has used the Load Planner tool in support of its Antarctica exploratory missions, enabling customized load planning for “routine” to the most challenging operational conditions requiring landing on sea-ice runways.

Other commercial entities that use the ICODES commercial modules include Wilhelmsen, Höegh Autoliners, Pasha Group, Liberty Global Logistics, SEACOR Holdings (previously as International Shipholding Corp.) and Logistics Management Institute.

The commercial customers use the technology to transport both commercial and military shipments, including cargo for U.S. DoD and international militaries.

THE TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATIONS
ICODES delivers six, high-level, functional capabilities to the customer. This suite of logistics services permit individuals in the logistics chain to intricately manage load planning, and successfully complete higher-order requirements up through managing ports, rail heads and other logistic nodes.

Artificial intelligence, in the form of embedded knowledge-based and rule-based agents, increase the speed, accuracy and quality of ICODES’ deployment operations.

Supply chains in the defense and commercial sectors also take advantage of SOA technology to complete lower-level, foundational capabilities, or micro services (services) for every requirement.

Combining these services within the SOA environment not only allows a system to execute highly complex computational tasks, but also extends the lifecycle of legacy systems. This, in turn, fills in functional gaps tailored to specific capabilities, allowing business processes to evolve.

A TEMPLATE FOR GROWTH
Current defense and commercial customers have further benefited from ICODES’ SOA infrastructure, which is made up of loosely coupled “services” that are somewhat related but can also work independently to manage processes. Its layered architecture is similar to the concept of LEGO blocks, allowing users to cost-effectively add functionality and easily evolve business processes.

This construct is permitting Tapestry’s development team to reuse existing functionalities, for example, and transition five legacy systems into a Cloud-compatible, Web application-based solution.

The implications of service reusability is significant for prospective commercial and other customers, regardless of their annual sales volume, or other metric of size. Rather than buy new off-the-shelf software, the end users can use service-oriented blocks in ICODES’ architecture to build “new” tailored software, scaled to their requirements.

With this feature, customers achieve greater flexibility, reduced development time and other costs, as well as increased system stability.

In one example of the state-of-possible, Tapestry’s engineering team built a software interface – from storyboarding through testing and fielding – and integrated a legacy system into ICODES in only 60 days.

Tapestry’s competencies in building software interfaces are well established, with approximately 25 interfaces supported by ICODES. The applications within ICODES include the Single Load Planner, Conveyance Estimator, Conveyance Builder, Data Manager, Data Cleanser, Conveyance Repository, Hand-Held Terminal Administrator, Information Repository, Breakbulk Tool, and more.

FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
Tapestry Solutions is focused on helping current and prospective customers keep supply chain costs down and gain other efficiencies through concurrent program and technology enhancements.

The DoD has contracted with Tapestry Solutions to redesign particular, remaining legacy logistics applications to become services-capable and link into ICODES’ SOA infrastructure – the Collaborative Information Workspace (CIW).

Beyond these programmatic advancements, future ICODES technology enhancements will leverage Tapestry’s competencies in RFID and its Enterprise Sensor Integration (ESI) solution, which in turn, will become part of the SOA infrastructure.

Tapestry Solutions is further staying ahead of customers’ imminent migration to Cloud providers for computational and data storage purposes via research and development programs, including an effort involving a commercial sector, Cloud service provider.

In addition, Tapestry is refining other capabilities in the service-client architecture environment, including options as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. An SaaS capability may conceptually provide military and commercial customers a “fee-for-service” or “pay-as-you-go” business model for ICODES/GOLDesp Load Planner access.

This technology thrust will further allow Tapestry Solution to move beyond the current ICODES program model of issuing quarterly, annual and other long-lead version upgrades, and be more continuously responsive (in weeks, or possibly days) to a customer’s change requests.

And finally, ICODES is transitioning from its Flash multimedia, software platform to the emerging Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) 5 format. This technology enhancement will streamline the server-to-client data exchange, allowing ICODES customers to run the latest version of the system on even “older” hardware – with a Web-browser required.

With these emerging and existing technologies, ICODES/GOLDesp Load Planner tools are designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of load planning operations for years to come. To learn more, contact Tapestry for consultation or email marketing@tapestrysolutions.com

The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information
does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.

Contact:

Janet Dayton
Tapestry Solutions Inc.
Boeing Global Services
jdayton@tapestrysolutions.com

How Advanced Maintenance & Supply Software like GOLDesp Reduces Risks & Costs Associated with Cannibalization of Military Equipment

January 14, 2018

Faced with budget cuts and a shortage of spare parts, military forces often resort to the inefficient maintenance practice of cannibalization – a strategy in which serviceable parts are removed from one complex asset to satisfy the operational needs of another higher-priority asset.

Although discouraged, cannibalization has long been a routine practice for military Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) organizations. It is particularly widespread for aircraft maintenance, as units work to maintain readiness on aging fleets at a time of increased deployments.

Cannibalization is usually practiced whenever it’s faster to harvest a component from existing equipment than it is to order the part from the supply system. Once this action is complete, an order is created to replace the component taken from the donor asset.

Drawbacks to Cannibalization

Although cannibalization may be beneficial on a very limited and controlled basis, the practice of systemic cannibalization actually decreases readiness, and increases maintenance and supply chain costs.

A heavily cannibalized A7 Corsair on display at the Russel Military Museum in Illinois.

By executing cannibalization, units are increasing their maintenance requirements, risking additional maintenance downtime due to incorrect fault identification and/or faulty repairs, and creating added supply chain turbulence. Furthermore, cannibalization can actually reduce the life of components.

However, an integrated maintenance and supply solution like GOLDesp MRO & Supply addresses these challenges. Developed by Tapestry Solutions, a Boeing Company, GOLDesp provides total lifecycle support for complex assets operating in land, air, sea and space environments.

GOLDesp ensures total asset visibility, giving operators a heightened awareness of the whereabouts, condition and availability of all components. With a click of a button, operators can determine whether an asset is on a shelf in a warehouse, installed on an end item, or is midstream through the repair cycle. This allows users to quickly assess alternatives to cannibalization.

Why Cannibalization Increases Costs & Risk

By providing superior tracking and automated workflow of all activities, GOLDesp reduces the risks and costs associated with cannibalization. It also limits unnecessary cannibalization activities and improves operational readiness of equipment. Here’s how:

Cannibalization Increases Maintenance Workloads
It increases workloads by effectively doubling the amount of MRO work necessary, compared to simply installing a delivered part. The asset takes twice as long to repair and additional quality inspection is required for the removed part. This significantly increases personnel labor hours and costs.
Cannibalization Renders Expensive Assets Unusable Temporarily
The donor equipment’s airworthiness and/or availability is reduced following cannibalization, affecting the donor assets’ future mission readiness. Failure to track the exact components removed can result in safety and/or financial issues due to inoperable equipment.
Cannibalization Can Result in Mechanical Side Effects
The physical act of removing components from complex assets is also problematic. In executing the removal and replacement, technicians may damage the components or connected systems. For example, removing fuel lines within engines to access fuel regulators or pumps may result in damage to the fuel system, increasing future maintenance costs and down time.

Systemic cannibalization is a symptom of poor maintenance management, lack of supply and maintenance integration, inadequate scheduled maintenance practices and the faulty quality assurance/control.

How GOLDesp Limits Cannibalization Risks

When cannibalization is absolutely necessary, GOLDesp limits risks through automated workflow, inventory management, total asset visibility and supply chain integration. The commercial-off-the-shelf software provides superior recordkeeping and tracking for all cannibalization activities in the following ways:

GOLDesp tracks all cannibalization activities and assets impacted to determine if cannibalization is appropriate. If so, the cannibalization action can only be performed after a part request has been created, and it has been determined that no items are available in supply inventory. A work order is then created, documenting the process and capturing required sign-offs.
GOLDesp ensures cannibalization is controlled and traceable. Approval authority for cannibalization is an important management step for an exchange. Authority to cannibalize assets is controlled by role-based security and approvals, which require electronic certification (E-Cert) signatures. The need for sign-off authorization, and the level of authorization required, can be determined for each GOLDesp customer site.
GOLDesp streamlines processes, including the creation and linking of records and work orders. This includes enabling access to past and current cannibalization records. Thus, all actions are traceable, reducing delays during future MRO of the donor equipment.
GOLDesp provides automated notifications of back-orders. If a replacement part becomes back-ordered, GOLDesp will immediately notify maintenance control personnel, who in turn, can then set the status of the equipment to “Not Mission Capable-Supply,” or NMCS, and make a determination on whether or not to cannibalize the part.
GOLDesp provides quality assurance/quality control process flows, ensuring that all testing and quality assurance/quality control is integrated as part of the repair process. Inspections are required and must be completed through use of authorized signatures by qualified, certified personnel.

This applies to processes ranging from flight certification to scheduled and unscheduled maintenance to component repair. GOLDesp guides the required process flows and ensures that the right people are engaged at the right time to achieve the best readiness outcomes.

Material Forecasting and DoD Supply Chain Integration

GOLDesp’s material forecasting capabilities ensures spares are readily available to support maintenance activities. This minimizes the need for cannibalization by accurately identifying requirements for new parts in advance, while reducing stockpiling of unnecessary spares.

GOLDesp’s material forecasting module examines past consumption in order to forecast future consumption and stock levels. It automatically correlates past consumption with completed maintenance/repair work orders over a specific period, supporting minimum and maximum ordering requirements. GOLDesp also:

Manages scheduled maintenance, reserves parts required directly from work orders and automatically replenishes stocks based on usage and demand forecasting
Automatically alerts maintenance managers to scheduled inspections and repairs
Provides a fleet level view of equipment readiness that allows operational and maintenance managers to make the right resource allocation decisions at the right time
Seamlessly interfaces with the U.S. military’s supply system. The software automates key processes that allow users to order material from the U.S. Department of Defense via Foreign Military Sales’ MILSTRIP processes. This includes automatic generation of military (MILS) requisitions, cancellations and amended messages.

Mission Accomplished with GOLDesp

In summary, GOLDesp ensures mission readiness by eliminating and/or mitigating cannibalization practices, thereby ensuring maximum equipment availability – whenever, wherever assets are needed. Above all, GOLDesp gives maintenance officers confidence in their logistics system and business practices by providing the right data needed to make the right decisions, and maximizing their resources to accomplish their missions.

The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information
does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.

Contact:

Janet Dayton
Tapestry Solutions Inc.
jdayton@tapestrysolutions.com

Watch videos to learn more about GOLDesp.

Tapestry to Showcase Military Applications for its Internet of Things platform, ESI, during RFID in Aerospace & Defense Conference

December 12, 2017

As a proud sponsor of RFID in Aerospace and Defense 2017, Tapestry Solutions will demonstrate how its Enterprise Sensor Integration (ESI) platform can help reshape fragmented supply chains and communications gateways by leveraging the Internet of Things, or IoT, that can improve the readiness and mobility of military forces.

During the conference, held Dec. 13 in Arlington, Va., company representatives will demonstrate ESI’s powerful capabilities at the Tapestry booth. Tapestry’s Patrick Lubinski, Business Development Director, will also present a case study during a presentation, “Connecting Aerospace & Defense (A&D) Supply Chains with Integrated IoT Sensor Solutions.” He will highlight the rollout of ESI across 50 Boeing factories – saving the aerospace giant over $100 million in its first year alone.

Lubinski will discuss how ESI can transform fragmented A&D supply chain operations, significantly optimizing asset tracking, inventory management, warehouse and fulfillment operations, and workflow management.

ESI is a revolutionary integration platform that provides a centralized hub for any sensor, regardless of hardware type or brands, and it can be offered as an on-premise or cloud-hosted solution. This “sensor-agnostic” IoT solution provides enterprise visibility and a common operating picture. It integrates digital analytics, enabling commanders and logisticians to easily digest massive amounts of data to facilitate relevant, instant decision-making.

By bridging disparate sensor technologies through a standard interface, ESI solves military’s challenges by obtaining real-time, relevant data from multiple sensor sources and networks. ESI addresses communications gaps caused by massive data collection from disjointed systems, rapid changes in globally dispersed operations, and increasingly complex distribution and supply chain operations.

WHY MILITARIES NEED TO ADOPT IoT TECHNOLOGIES

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nick Cerilli)

Unlike the consumer supply chain, the military supply chain involves an unstable and unpredictable demand, moving end supply points, and ensuring equipment readiness for war. These challenges present complications such as difficult inventory and asset management, inefficient equipment maintenance and repair operations, overstocking of spare parts, and long ship times for spares that are not immediately available in the shop.

The lack of automation also presents a challenge for defense organizations. Data collection is dependent on manual entry, and there is limited processing of massive data collection through data analytics tools. This leads to a fragmented information technology structure – a major issue facing militaries today.

The military lacks a cohesive IT architecture that can support the Internet of Things, according to the CSIS eBook “Leveraging the Internet of Things for a More Efficient and Effective Military.” The authors noted that the armed services and the Department of Defense (DoD) agencies are connected to DoD networks, but these networks are developed independently and with different requirements.

“Often, multiple services are involved in an operation, or multiple agencies are involved in a process, but information has to be passed between their stovepiped systems manually, which is inefficient and allows for human error. Fragmentation across DoD’s IT architectures complicates the development and use of common security protocols and practices across DoD network,” according to CSIS.

THE ESI APPROACH TO MILITARY CHALLENGES
ESI ensures all IT systems are interoperable, enabling the military to leverage the full potential of the IoT. It ensures standardization across the enterprise, allowing asset management and tracking systems to talk to each other in the larger IoT ecosystem.

ESI automates workflow processes, and together with digital analytics, enables decision-makers to easily process the sheer volume of data, reducing data overload.

In the area of supply chain management, ESI enables logisticians to efficiently track and manage complex assets and individual supplies down to the tactical level. It allows decision-makers to see a complete picture of asset movements and inventory at any given time.

ESI collectively processes data from sensors such as RFID position-information tags; passive and active GPS-enabled WiFi tags; and embedded hardware and complex servers, both legacy and next-generation systems.

As noted by CSIS, IoT technology can significantly reduce costs in the following areas:

Inventory Management – Real-time supply chain visibility and predictive analytics enable the military to order parts and supplies on demand, and reduce stockpiling and loss.
Real-Time Fleet Management – Adopting IoT devices for real-time fleet management, including sensors for cargo, geolocation, status, fuel efficiency and weight; can reduce fuel costs by as much as 25 percent and increase fleet utilization by two percent.
Condition-Based Maintenance — Retrofitting vehicle fleet with onboard sensors to monitor engine performance and parts facilitates on-demand ordering of parts, which in turn, reduces unanticipated failures.
Base Management and Energy Efficiency – Smart thermostats have saved consumers up to 15 percent on heating and cooling. Even half those efficiency gains could save the DoD $700 million per year on energy.

Tapestry Solutions, Inc. is a global provider of information management software and services for defense, government and commercial markets. Backed by our parent company, The Boeing Company, we provide mission planning, training and simulation support to maximize readiness for our warfighters. We also help solve logistics challenges for the world’s largest and most complex supply chains. Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., Tapestry supports customers from more than 50 locations worldwide, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Afghanistan, Kuwait, the UK, South Korea, Australia, Germany and Italy.

WATCH VIDEO TO SEE ESI IN ACTION

Tapestry Solutions Introduces GOLDesp MRO & Supply Interoperable Software to Coalition Leaders at Military Logistics & Procurement Conference, Kuwait

November 29, 2016

KUWAIT, November 29, 2016 – As a proud sponsor of the Kuwait’s annual Military Logistics & Procurement Kuwait conference,Tapestry Solutions officials highlighted the company’s industry-leading GOLDesp MRO & Supply software solution today at a presentation that was attended by international leaders from the Middle East, Europe, U.S., NATO and the UK.

In keeping with the conference theme, “Streamlining logistics and procurement in the age of joint operations,” Tapestry’s speaker outlined best practices in information technology for achieving coalition interoperability, with references to the company’s Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) software solution. GOLDesp is also featured in Tapestry’s booth at the Kuwait conference, which is supported by the newly formed Armament and Procurement Authority of the Kuwait Ministry of Defence.

GOLDesp software modernizes MRO & supply chain operations for complex assets operating in land, air, sea and space environments. The technology standardizes and automates the maintenance and supply planning, scheduling and execution business processes, as well as the IT
infrastructure, for assets ranging from fighter jets and UAVs to military transports, vessels and space systems.

A fully deployable, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product, GOLDesp has been successfully implemented as a tri-service logistics management solution by military organizations in Europe, the UK, Asia, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The Kuwait venue serves as a forum for the officers from the Kuwait Armed Forces to meet with their international counterparts and suppliers to overcome the challenges of logistics and procurement. This is an important year for the Kuwaiti armed forces, as Kuwait’s parliament recently approved an additional defense budget of over US$10 billion to support additional procurements.

The conference includes over 15 sessions and group discussions led by senior-most military officials in Kuwait and other world-leading militaries. The speakers included Major General Lafi Al Aazmi, Chief of the Armament & Procurement Authority of the Kuwait Armed Forces; and Brigadier General Abdullah AlButi, Deputy Commander Kuwait Air Force. They were joined by an impressive roster speakers from the UK Ministry of Defence, United States Central Command, NATO and a number of other prominent speakers such as logistics commanders from Poland and Germany.

ABOUT TAPESTRY SOLUTIONS
Tapestry Solutions, Inc. is a global provider of information management software and services for defense, government and commercial markets. Backed by our parent company, The Boeing Company, we help solve logistics challenges for the world’s largest and most complex supply chains. We also provide mission planning, training and simulation support to maximize readiness for our warfighters. Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., Tapestry supports customers from more than 50 locations around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Afghanistan, Kuwait, the UK, South Korea, Australia and Germany.

Media Contact:
Janet Dayton
jdayton@tapestrysolutions.com