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By Dawn S. Onley, GCN Staff

‘Mr. Logistics’ is leading the Army’s charge toward a single supply-chain system

The Army has 16 stubborn logistics systems that don’t speak to each other. They each have different software baselines and operate on dissimilar hardware platforms.

Col. David Coker, the program manager for the Army’s logistics information systems, doesn’t want them to get along. He wants them to go away.

It is Coker’s job to both maintain and modernize the 16 systems currently operating in Iraq and Afghanistan while also working to develop the Web-based Global Combat Support System-Army that will replace them. Starting in 2007, GCSS-Army will be fielded to 134,000 supply sergeants, commanders and maintenance personnel.

All in one

The integrated system, using software from SAP America Inc. of Newtown Square, Pa., will maintain all of the Army’s logistics information in one location. It will eventually replace the 16 disparate systems that keep track of everything from parts to maintenance management.

“It’s updated and near-real time, and you don’t have to log in the same part number on different screens,” Coker explained. “It reduces a lot of duplication of orders.

“Currently, you have all of these different systems that have different software that don’t necessarily talk to each other. You have different training, different levels of expertise found in different organizational structures. What you don’t have right now is an integrated clear picture of everything so it really provides a capability that has not been there before.”

Part of the management challenge is keeping the existing systems running while developing the deploying the new one.

“It’s a change-management transformation kind of thing as well as a replacement,” said Kevin Carroll, the Army’s program executive officer for enterprise information systems.

“We’re really trying to transform the way we do logistics business at the tactical level and at the unit level and installation level, and move us toward commercial best practices for logistics,” Carroll added. “It will cut down all the interfaces that we do and all the complexity we have will be reduced by putting out this common solution.”

None of that makes Coker’s job easy, but he takes it all in stride, said his boss, Carroll.

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