Using ARIS to Design the Future Logistics Enterprise

Thomas R. Gulledge

George Mason University
Enterprise Engineering Laboratory, MS 2E4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444 USA

Philip Hayes

Teamworks Partners, Inc.
Washington, DC USA

Georg Simon and Alexander Lotterer

IDS Scheer, Inc.
1205 Westlakes Drive, Suite 270
Berwyn, PA 19312 USA

Summary:
The US Department of Defense (DoD) is engaged in a multi-year transformation of logistics planning and execution to support the objectives of Focused Logistics[1], which are integral to achieving the goals of Joint Vision 2020. The Deputy Undersecretary for Defense – Logistics and Material Readiness (DUSD-L&MR) has established a multi-disciplinary, government, industry, and academic team to create an operational architecture to help guide the multi-year transformation from the current DoD logistics environment to the Future Logistics Enterprise (FLE.) This framework, known as the Future Logistics Enterprise Operational Architecture (FLE OA), provides a common language and common structures for articulating requirements, policies, processes, and infrastructure needed to establish the FLE. This chapter describes the use of the ARIS methodology for the development of the FLE OA.

Keywords: Logistics, Business Process Architecture, Supply Chain, SCOR, Standard Software, Public Sector, Department of Defense

1Project Background

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has proposed a major transformation of the way that it plans for and executes logistics in support of joint operations. This multi-year effort is called the Future Logistics Enterprise (U.S. DoD, 2002). “The Future Logistics Enterprise (FLE) is an integrated set of six collaborative initiatives to achieve end-to-end customer service within Department of Defense logistics operations. The primary intent of the FLE is to accelerate the DoD’s implementation of integrated logistics chains and commercial information systems to meet warfighter sustainment needs and the operational requirements of the National Defense Strategy. The FLE is focused on those mid-term policy, process, and systems changes the DoD must make in order to continue to effectively support our warfighting customers”

The DoD has directed the Future Logistics Enterprise Operational Architecture (FLE OA) project team build a collaborative architectural model that links policy, strategy, metrics, processes and supporting information technologies. The primary intent of the FLE OA is to provide guidance to DoD agencies and military service components responsible for the development of logistics processes and supporting technologies needed to achieve the high degree of interoperability and agility required for modern joint military operations. The DoD established the principle that the FLE OA must provide useful guidance without inhibiting innovation by users of the FLE OA. The FLE OA is designed to evolve as priorities, strategies, and technologies change over time. The collaborative design of the OA anticipates the growing involvement of commercial providers in the full life-cycle support of weapons systems under the concept of full Contractor Logistics Support (CLS.) The FLE OA resides in the ARIS toolset, which facilitates the use, and evolution, of the FLE OA by authorized constituents across the military establishment and from non-DoD communities such as civilian agencies, commercial partners, and military allies.

1.1 The Six FLE Strategies

1.1.1 Depot Maintenance Partnerships

The primary intent of the Depot Maintenance Partnership initiative is to enable DoD-owned maintenance depots to expand partnerships with commercial companies, while fulfilling the national security need for the DoD to retain depot maintenance capabilities.

1.1.2 Condition-Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+)

CBM+ focuses on inserting technology into both existing and new weapon systems to support improved maintenance capabilities and businesses processes. The long-term goal is to integrate condition sensors and self-reporting technology directly into weapon systems so the systems become a direct extension of the logistics chain. The “Logistics Chain” extends the supply chain to include maintenance and transportation functions needed to sustain an operating military force. The advent of this technology requires significant process and policy changes to achieve the dramatic improvements in logistics system responsiveness required to meet DoD strategic goals.

1.1.3 Total Life Cycle Systems Management (TLCSM)

The primary intent of this initiative is to improve weapon system sustainment by establishing clear responsibility and accountability for meeting warfighter performance expectations within the weapon system program management office. The weapon systems program manager will be held responsible for the overall management of the weapon system life cycle to include: timely acquisition of weapon systems, meeting warfighter performance requirements, integration of sustainability and maintainability during the acquisition process, and weapon system sustainment to meet or exceed warfighter performance requirements throughout the life cycle at best corporate value to the Services and the DoD.

1.1.4 End-to-End Distribution (E2E)

The end-to-end distribution initiative is directed toward streamlining warfighter support by providing materiel, including retrograde and associated information, from the source of supply or point of origin to the point of use or disposal, as defined by the Combatant Commanders, Military Services, or characteristics of the commodity, on a worldwide basis. The intent of the initiative is to influence acquisition, sourcing, and positioning to facilitate the flow of materiel to the end user, ensuring that deployment and sustainment are synchronized

1.1.5 Executive Agents (EA)

The Executive Agents initiative is aimed at improving support to warfighters by ensuring that roles, responsibilities, resources, and capabilities are responsive to the supported Combatant Commanders’ deployment and sustainment requirements. The goal is to clarify responsibilities in the complex milieu of crisis/deliberate planning and during deployments of all types.

1.1.6 Enterprise Integration (EI)

To accelerate development of the FLE, this initiative builds upon efforts, underway within the Services and the Defense Logistics Agency, which successfully uses commercial ERP and other commercial solutions to enable the business process requirements across the FLE.

The DoD recognizes that it will take many years to fully implement the FLE, including changes to policy, statute, infrastructure and organization. This transformation requires a mechanism to facilitate on-going planning and analysis while providing a means to communicate changes to successive generations of civilian and military personnel throughout the defense establishment.

1.2 The Scope of DoD Logistics

It is useful to understand how the terms logistics and supply chain are used in the commercial sector and in the military establishments. This is all the more relevant due to the significant, and increasing, role of commercial companies in military logistics and supply chain operations under the concept of full Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) for new weapons systems. Generally, the commercial sector definitions of logistics and supply chain reflect a subset of the broader military use of the terms. The following definitions from the Council on Logistics Management (CLM) and the Institute of Logistics Management (IoLT) reflect prevailing commercial usage.

1.2.1 The CLM Definition of Logistics

”Logistics is that part of the supply chain process that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customers' requirements.”

1.2.2 The CLM Definition of Supply Chain Management

”Supply Chain Management is the systemic, strategic coordination of the traditional business functions and the tactics across these business functions within a particular company and across businesses within the supply chain for the purposes of improving the long-term performance of the individual companies and the supply chain as a whole.”

1.2.3 The IoLT Definitions of Logistics and the Supply-Chain

  • “Logistics is the time-related positioning of resources, or the strategic
    management of the total supply-chain
  • The supply-chain is a sequence of events intended to satisfy a customer
  • It can include procurement, manufacture, distribution, and waste disposal, together with associated transport, storage and information technology
  • The application of logistics is essential to the efficient management of the supply-chain
  • Transport is an integral part of the supply-chain, not only between the sequence of events but during the processes
  • ‘Logistics’ is the process of designing, managing and improving such supply-chains, which might include purchasing, manufacturing, storage and, of course, transport.”

It is worth noting that prevailing commercial supply chain models and software packages were designed from the point of view of the manufacturer. The result is that business processes as implemented in commercial software solutions focus on a chain of events that begins with a raw material or semi-finished good, adds value to the raw or semi-finished material, and passes (distributes) the value-added item to the next link in the supply chain. The next link could be an end customer or another value-add operation. An idea implicit in commercial supply chain models is that a finished item is eventually handed off to an end user. The latest version of the SCOR model (version 5.0) adds processes for the Return of items from an end user to the final supply chain and for the Return of an item from one supply chain to the source of supply in an upstream supply chain (Supply Chain Council, 2001). In its current form, SCOR does not include a comprehensive model for Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul.

The DoD logistics definition of a supply chain extends the breadth of the commercial definition to include storage, repair, and movement of items after receipt by the end user. Military logistics processes must address the requirements of military missions such as Mobilization, Movement, Deployment, and In-Theater Distribution. A viable DoD logistics model requires definition of processes such as configuration management, training, and quality assurance. Commercial supply chain models such as SCOR are silent or make only tangential references to many of these areas.

1.3 The Scope of SCOR

A key input to development of the FLE OA is the Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR) (Supply Chain Council, 2001). “The Reference Model is the product of the Supply-Chain Council (SCC), an independent, not-for-profit, global corporation with membership open to all companies and organizations interested in applying and advancing the state-of-the-art in supply-chain management systems and practices.” Initially developed in 1996, the SCOR model has been widely adopted by industry and government as a common basis for expressing the fundamental operational components of a supply chain. At the highest level, SCOR identifies Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, and Return as the macro, Level 1, process types of a supply chain. These five level 1 process types decompose to 30 Level 2 process categories, which decompose into 156 Level 3 processes elements.

SCOR is a framework that provides a common language and common process constructs for communicating supply chain concepts. SCOR provides common ways of expressing ideas within the knowledge domain of supply chains.

The SCOR documentation (Supply Chain Council, 2001) addresses many of the boundaries of the Model:

  • “It does not attempt to describe every business process or activity. Specifically, the Model does not address: sales and marketing (demand generation), product development, research and development, and some elements of post-delivery customer support.”
  • “The Model is silent in the areas of human resources, training, and quality assurance among others.”

SCOR was constructed from the point of view of a manufacturer. A quick examination of SCOR level 2 processes confirms this orientation. The first level Source, Make, Deliver, Return processes are in decomposed into second level processes according to the method of manufacture of the product e.g. M1 Make-to-Stock, M2 Make-to-Order, M3 Engineer-to-Order (see Figure 3 SCOR Version 5 Level 2 Toolkit).

For example, SCOR was not designed to cover the broad spectrum of mission requirements faced by DoD and the military services in moving people, equipment, and material around the world to meet constantly shifting operational needs.

SCOR defines processes at a level above that needed for an executable supply chain design. This overarching framework serves as tool for developing a specific supply chain blueprint. “The [Supply Chain] Council has focused on three process levels and does not attempt to prescribe how a particular organization should conduct its business or tailor its systems / information flow. Every organization that implements supply chain improvements using the SCOR-model will need to extend the Model, at least to Level 4, using organization-specific processes, systems, and practice.”

1.4 The C4ISR Framework

The FLE OA conforms to the C4ISR Architectural Framework (U.S. DoD, 1997) standards for expressing operational, systems and technical views of architecture components. Architectures provide a mechanism for understanding and managing complexity. Within the United States Department of Defense exists a standard framework to express Operational Architectures. This framework is called C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance). The purpose of the C4ISR architecture framework is to express operational architectures that enable the quick synthesis of “go-to-war” requirements with sound investments leading to the rapid employment of improved operational capabilities. The ability to compare, analyze, and integrate architectures developed by the geographical and functional, unified Commands, Military Services, and Defense Agencies (hereinafter also referred to as Commands, Services, and Agencies, or C/S/As) from a cross-organizational perspective is critical to achieving these objectives.

The C4ISR Architecture Framework is intended to ensure that the architecture descriptions developed by the Commands, Services, and Agencies are expressed in a sufficiently common manner to enable communications between and among organizations. This common framework is essential to creating architectural planning tools that may be compared and integrated across Joint and combined organizational boundaries.

The Framework provides the rules, guidance, and product descriptions for developing and presenting architecture descriptions that ensure a common denominator for understanding, comparing, and integrating architectures. The application of the Framework will enable architectures to contribute most effectively to building interoperable and cost-effective military systems.

1.4.1 Definition of the Operational Architecture

The operational architecture is a description of the tasks and activities, operational elements, and information flows required to accomplish or support a military operation. It contains descriptions (often graphical) of the operational elements, assigned tasks and activities, and information flows required to support the warfighter. It defines the types of information exchanged, the frequency of exchange, which tasks and activities are supported by the information exchanges, and the nature of information exchanges in detail sufficient to ascertain specific interoperability requirements.

Table1. C4ISR Operational Views

1.4.2 Definition of the Systems Architecture

The systems architecture is a description, including graphics, of systems and interconnections providing for, or supporting, warfighting functions. For a domain, the systems architecture shows how systems link and interoperate, and may describe the internal construction and operations of particular systems within the architecture. For individual systems, the systems architecture includes the physical connection, location, and identification of key nodes (including materiel item nodes), circuits, networks, warfighting platforms, etc., and specifies system and component performance parameters (e.g., mean time between failure, maintainability, availability). The systems architecture aligns physical resources and their performance attributes to the operational architecture and its requirements per standards defined in the technical architecture.

Table 2: C4ISR System Views

1.4.3 Definition of the Technical Architecture

The technical architecture is the minimal set of rules governing the arrangement, interaction, and interdependence of system parts or elements, whose purpose is to ensure that a system satisfies a specified set of requirements. The technical architecture provides the technical systems-implementation guidelines upon which engineering specifications are based, common building blocks are established, and product lines are developed. The technical architecture includes a collection of the technical standards, conventions, rules and criteria organized into profile(s) that govern system services, interfaces, and relationships for particular systems architecture views and that relate to particular operational views.

Table 3: C4ISR Technical Views

1.4.4 C4ISR Compliancy and the ARIS Toolset

The C4ISR Architecture Framework does not define the supporting tools to be used to build an architecture. As it should be with a flexible architectural framework, multiple tools could be used to express the required C4ISR views.

The advantage of the ARIS methodology and associated toolset is that it is fully compliant with the C4ISR framework. ARIS supports all essential and supporting views and combines them in one object-linked repository. The following table shows a mapping among the C4ISR views and related ARIS methods:

C4ISR / ARIS Method
OV-1 / Value Added Chain Diagram (VACD): The value added chain diagram allows you to describe the high level functions that support the mission or the vision of the organization. Organizational responsibilities, information objects, location etc. can be associated with this model.
OV-2 / ARIS UML Activity Diagram: The ARIS UML activity diagram describes a process as a sequence of activities. The information flow & connectivity’s is represented by the decision conditions & connection role type available in this model type. Also activities performed at each node can be assigned organizational responsibilities using “swim lanes”