DLA - Defense Logistics Agency
12/18/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 12/18/2024 05:59
A short history of business systems modernization, Part 1
FORT BELVOIR, Va. -
Editor's Note: This article is the first of three chronicling Business Systems Modernization, the journey DLA took to replace its signature management technology.
The impetus for change increases as need becomes obvious. After deploying the Standard Automated Materiel Management System to automate supply functions in the early 1970s, the Defense Logistics Agency modified its operation at inventory supply points but saw no need for a wholesale redesign until commercial options surpassed the technology in the 1990s. Even then, debate over what to do with SAMMS paralyzed decision makers until maintenance costs made the system untenable.
According to Navy Vice Admiral Keith W. Lippert, DLA's 14th director, the agency tried to replace SAMMS five times before finally succeeding on the sixth attempt. While no doubt true, the six efforts flowed together in a mass of indiscriminate analyses, panels and projects. As best can be discerned, DLA's current automation can be traced back to the beginning of the fifth attempt. Starting in 1997, this attempt occurred when customers and workers alike recognized DLA needed to shift from SAMMS.
Modified Problem-Solving Steps
With DLA's structure, procedures and reputation revolving around SAMMS, replacing it presented a seemingly intractable problem. To make the task manageable, the agency followed a procedure that mirrored the problem-solving process used by the Army at the time. The rest of this article applies these steps to the fifth attempt and ends with the decision to restart the process: the sixth and final attempt.
With DLA's structure, procedures and reputation revolving around SAMMS, replacing it presented a seemingly intractable problem. To make the task manageable, the agency followed a procedure that mirrored the problem-solving process used by the Army at the time.
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After installing SAMMS as a prototype at the Defense Construction Supply Center in 1968, DLA corrected mistakes and deployed the system throughout the agency. Within a decade, SAMMS was running at six supply centers and covered every commodity except fuel and fresh fruits and vegetables. It also became a more accurate reflection of reality, with new technology increasing the rate at which its mainframe and terminals communicated with each other.
As time passed, however, SAMMS's reliance on hardware and inflexible programming caused it to fall behind the commercial systems used by DLA's vendors. In November 1997, the agency's chief information officer, Carla Von Bernewitz, briefed DLA's logistics support commander on a plan to rehost the program on a different data network. While Navy Rear Adm. David P. Keller liked the idea, analysis over the following months determined it wouldn't solve SAMMS's many problems. By July 1998, he had eliminated the rehost option and, by October of that year, the agency had selected a transition partner to help it map a new solution.
That partner, the accounting firm KPMG, gathered facts and made assumptions, Step 2 of the problem-solving process, and defined end states and established criteria, Step 3. For Step 2, the company convinced agency leaders they needed two management systems, one for enterprise resource planning and one for advanced planning and scheduling. For Step 3, KPMG assisted DLA in writing a mission-needs statement, which the agency released Oct. 14, 1998, and the Joint Requirements Oversight Council approved Nov. 23, 1999.
DLA managed change in the interim between release and approval. It started by informing employees it was replacing SAMMS. It then established the Business Systems Modernization Steering Group to oversee the transition. Helped by KPMG, the BSMSG mapped job descriptions to supply chain processes in what it called "day-in-the-life" scenarios. The group also defined what it wanted from a systems integrator, a commercial company capable of executing decisions DLA and KPMG made. Finally, the steering group relied on the accounting firm's knowledge of "off-the-shelf" technology to present demonstrations of two enterprise resource planning contenders - Systems Applications and Products and Oracle - and two advanced planning and scheduling contenders, i2 and Manugistics.
Despite following a sequential process, DLA realized in early 2000 that its problem-solving wasn't addressing all of SAMMS's shortfalls. Recognizing that the scale of transformation exceeded their earlier estimates, planners returned to gathering facts and making assumptions. What happened next - the sixth and final attempt - will be addressed in the following article.