ON THE RIGHT GTRAC
U.S., just below Boeing Co., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Veri- zon Communications Inc. and Te Walt Disney Co., but ahead of Costco Wholesale Corp., Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., Xerox Corp., Comcast Corp., General Electric, Coca-Cola Co., Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp.
Tis effort has not been without its challenges, however. Along the complicated road to implementing an Armywide overhaul of its logistics automation infrastructure, GCSS-Army program management had to confront various hurdles, including:
• Te complex demands of fielding an ERP solution across multiple business areas and levels of materiel management. Te business areas of supply support, property book, ground maintenance, unit supply, finance and materiel management will now exist within a single database and operate in near- real time.
• Te dynamic and varying requirements flowing in from its major components (active Army, National Guard and Army Reserve). With each component varying in configuration and mission, GCSS-Army had to be designed to meet each com- ponent’s unique needs. In addition, the next level of unique needs within each component had to be considered and met, such as:
Missile system: specific detailed system and subsystem management.
Watercraft: onboard spare parts management. Logistics Readiness Center: reimbursable maintenance requirements.
Operations and Maintenance, Army and Army Working Capital Fund streams. Special operations.
• Te extensive coordination required to field an Army in motion and transition. Tis required considering each unit’s training schedule and possible deployment within the fielding window.
• Te resistance to change that historically has plagued ERP implementations. Users had grown comfortable using fairly basic, unsophisticated systems over a period of years and in some cases decades. Te basic logistics language that had prevailed since the 1970s was being replaced and required significant relearning. Finally, career legacy experts were becoming novices overnight, adding to increased discomfort with the system.
• Te significant policy, regulatory and doctrinal overhaul required to reflect appropriate guidance. Historically, the development of replacement logistics software systems was regulation-based. In other words, functionality had to con- form to existing regulations, which tended to perpetuate the logic, functionality and language of systems being replaced. Previous logistics software replacements required minimal changes to regulation and doctrine.
TRAINING AND FIELDING One of the most demanding efforts throughout the GCSS- Army program has been the daunting new equipment (in this case, enterprise) training requirements. Te fielding of logistics information systems over the past four decades has been pretty standard; it followed the basic design, develop, test, schedule, train, convert and sustain events. Each fielding involved a singu- lar logistics business area such as supply, maintenance, property book, unit supply or ammunition. Tis allowed the Army to define and isolate the target business area.
IT STARTS WITH THE WEB
Fielding of GCSS-A starts with internet-based training that includes the structure, language, process flow, basic navigation and access administration of the system. (Image courtesy of the author)
Te significantly smaller population of target users made it eas- ier to communicate and coordinate the fielding requirements. In essence, the stand-alone nature of legacy logistics information systems allowed for their discrete fielding while the other busi- ness areas remained unaffected. Te only distinct requirement
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Army AL&T Magazine
July-September 2017
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