Government Computer News
Army logistics system is getting results
Challenges remain for complex supply chain project
Digg
De.licio.us
Slashdot
Technorati
Image: Rick Steele
This system is the backbone of the Army. It’s time to roll it out and get it to the rest of the Army.” Col. David Coker, ARMY
The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly criticized the program for various reasons over the past three years. And when Col. David Coker, program manager for Army Logistics Information Systems, visited Capitol Hill recently, he said legislators were sharpening their pencils, ready to take a chunk out of his budget.
“For some reason, they thought LMP was still in the planning stage,” he said at the Military Logistics Summit 2006, an IDGA program in Vienna, Va., last month. “I had to explain to them that the system has been up and running since 2003.”
LMP captures logistics data from the Army supply system and manages a variety of logistics processes.
It replaced two legacy materiel management systems, the Commodity Command Standard and Standard Depot systems.
Coker acknowledged that the project has experienced “a huge amount of problems ... but we are working through them.”
“These are the same problems faced by other major logistics software programs,” he added.
GAO, in a series of reports, most recently in May 2006, has documented Coker’s many problems. The watchdog agency has criticized the Army’s failure to conduct performance reviews and to adequately test system requirements, its inability to assure data quality, and its failure to implement earlier GAO recommendations.
“The GAO is always looking over our shoulder,” Coker said.
LMP operates in an enormously complex environment, Coker said, pointing out that the Army’s is the world’s largest and most complex supply chain.
Laundry list
The legacy systems were actually an amalgam of more than 2,500 stovepiped programs that handled a laundry list of Army logistics functions, including ammunition management, depot maintenance, supply and inventory management, requisition processing, financial management and goods and services procurement.
“LMP integrates with over 80 other DOD systems,” Coker said, “manages $4.5 billion in inventory with 50,000 vendors, and currenty handles 1.6 million transactions daily.”
![1105 Government Information Group [purity]](/images/1105logo_website.gif "Government Computer News [purity]")
© 1996-2008 1105 Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
