FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
Editor’s Note: This article is the third of three chronicling Business Systems Modernization, the journey DLA took to replace its signature management technology.
After years losing ground to commercial offerings, the Defense Logistics Agency finally began implementing Business Systems Modernization in November 2001. Previous efforts to replace the Standard Automated Materiel Management System had stalled enough times to convince agency leaders the only way to introduce new technology was to institute fundamental change. Not only would the agency replace SAMMS, but it would also reconfigure offices, rewrite job descriptions and redesign operations.
Most structural change occurred at supply centers. Buying commands in Philadelphia, Columbus and Richmond had recently shifted from a commodity to a weapons-system focus. BSM solidified this transition while dividing workforces into those who interacted with customers and those who interacted with vendors. As part of this reorientation, the supply centers consolidated 1,100 position descriptions into 179, affecting 5,000 people. As BSM expanded to additional supply chains, these 5,000 employees became 8,000.
BSM also introduced new positions at DLA Headquarters. On the recommendation of the Business Systems Modernization Steering Group, Navy Vice Adm. Keith W. Lippert, the agency’s 14th director, established national account managers – senior service integrators today – to conduct high-level planning with the military services. Likewise, DLA Logistics Operations organized its Business Modernization directorate into planning, order fulfillment, procurement, financial management and quality assurance divisions.
A new philosophy underpinned these changes. Put simply, the agency stopped following process-focused models and started following outcome-orientated ones. More precisely, it switched from managing supplies to managing suppliers, mobilizing via inventory to mobilizing via industry, and making instantaneous buys to purchasing off long-term contracts.
Labor and philosophical changes were prerequisites for technological change. While DLA focused on restructuring supply centers, its systems integrator, Andersen Consulting, led teams through a product development process called waterfall. Although comprehensive, waterfall development allowed technology providers Systems Applications and Products and Manugistics to modify off-the-shelf products instead of designing new ones. While DLA had a unique mission, the planning, order fulfillment, procurement, and financial functions it wanted to automate were common.
Events outside DLA’s control continued to interrupt progress after the agency began replacing SAMMS. This time the problem was the collapse of Enron, which forced Andersen Consulting’s parent company, Arthur Andersen, to cease operations. While Andersen Consulting continued as an independent firm named Accenture, a gap developed in its support to the agency. DLA leaned on the Defense Information Systems Agency to get back on schedule.
Advised by DISA, the agency transferred items in stages. The initial, or “Go-Live,” stage kicked off July 2002 and covered 170,000 items, or 5% of DLA inventory. The second stage began November 2003 and focused on battle dress uniforms and subsistence. Combined, the two stages resulted in DLA procuring 1.9 million items with modern technology. To support the shift, 550 employees at Defense Supply Center Philadelphia switched to BSM jobs. The third and final stage began with a functionality release in August 2004. It covered another 1.9 million items. Although rollouts continued through December 2006 and the agency didn’t reach full operational capability for another seven months, 2005 was the year of transition – the first year in three decades that a hardware supply center procured items without SAMMS.
With BSM proving efficient, the agency received Office of Secretary of Defense permission to broaden the program. In an effort called Enterprise Business Systems, DLA developed enterprise resource planning systems for accounting, real property, electronic procurement, energy, stock positioning and procurement for the public sector. While this arrangement mirrors how the agency had expanded SAMMS, System Applications and Products ensured that all EBS programs communicated seamlessly with each other, something the agency’s initial management system had difficulty doing.
EBS has served as DLA’s management technology for longer than most employees have been with the agency. Today DLA finds itself where it was in the 1990s, with current systems second-tier but working well enough to hide the need for transition. The situation is different in at least one aspect, however. Whereas DLA leaders dithered over replacing SAMMS, their successors have resolved to retire EBS before the need to do so becomes imperative. While this eagerness can be attributed to foresight, DLA leaders also had foresight in the 1990s. What makes 2024 different is a comfort with technological change and the limited disruption expected from that change. Immersed in electronics, managers today are more amenable to replacing systems than they once were. Because the systems they are introducing require retraining, not reductions or reclassifications, employees more easily accept their necessity.