SUSTAINING WARFIGHTER READINESS

	ISG knows that having the right supplies, when and where they are needed, can be the difference between defeating an adversary and losing American lives.

Moving Closer to a STEP-Enabled Weapon System Sustainment Environment

The U.S. military’s intense operational tempo is placing vehicles and weapon systems under extreme stress. Battle damages and day-to-day wear and tear on equipment are posing significant mission availability challenges to the commanders in the field. ISG is delivering solutions to help the warfighters meet those challenges.

Standardizing DoD’s spares acquisition process will help alleviate current and future sustainment issues. ISG is applying the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data, or STEP, within the Army’s weapon system sustainment community. Specifically, ISG has led the development of the cast part STEP application to International Standard status and the Dimensional Inspection application to Draft International Standard status. In addition, under ISG’s leadership approximately half of the forged part STEP application has been completed.

The U.S. Army ARDEC has produced over 600 critically needed weapons systems parts using ISG’s STEP technology. Anniston Army Depot continues to be the premier STEP-enabled manufacturing facility within DoD, employing ISG’s STEP tools to meet grueling Abrams tank RESET demands.

ISG also continues to advance the functionality of its STEP toolkit. Recent accomplishments include porting of the toolkit to a PC-based configuration, development of sophisticated feature recognition, and upgrading the product data output functionality to ensure full compliance with Army 3-D modeling guidelines. In addition, ISG recently provided the tools and technologies to enable the Watervliet Arsenal to become the latest STEP-capable DoD manufacturing site.

Helping DoD EMALL Better Respond to Warfighters’ Needs

The DoD EMALL is the military equivalent of Amazon.comTM, providing Service men and women worldwide, as well as personnel from other government agencies, one-stop shopping for a broad array of goods and services.

ISG continues to enhance the capabilities of the DoD EMALL. A major upgrade for the Naval Facilities Command allows facilities-related work around the globe to be managed on-line. A tailored web-based travel site supports the Navy’s shipbuilders as part of the EMALL’s Naval Long-Term Housing feature. A ‘Ship Everything Together’ application has been completed that aggregates multiple vendor orders for optimizing shipping and reducing costs.

A major upgrade to the EMALL’s MILSTRIP Ordering System, which directly supports the fulfillment of orders being placed by the military’s warfighters in the Middle East, has been completed. This added capability has responded extremely well to numerous urgent “expedite order” alerts received from the theaters of operation.

Over $550 million in goods and services were bought in FY06 through the DoD EMALL, with most delivered by commercial air transport. EMALL’s Shopping Optimization Function is a Real Winner! ISG has been instrumental in developing and implementing the Shopping Optimization (ShOp) feature of the DoD EMALL. Complex decision support techniques, derived from the field of operations research, assess the cost savings that can be realized by wisely choosing from a number of alternative sources. These savings are then applied to EMALL-initiated purchases to optimize the content of each shopping cart. Instead of buying all of their office supplies from one particular office supply store, ShOp informs each EMALL user how to save money by purchasing certain supplies from Staples, others from Office Max, and still others from Office Depot, then collects all of the purchases in a single cart for checkout. DoD EMALL management estimates an average of 9% can be saved on each EMALL order when the ShOp feature is used.