Information technology for Marine Corps ammunition: the enterprise of managing Marine Corps ground ammunition requires new information systems to support forces in the field
Imagine working for a company with a merchandise inventory valued at $4.2 billion and nearly 1,500 employees working at 22 different locations around the world. Your company’s inventory consists of some 337 different major end items weighing a total of 210,510 tons and is stored at over 150 places worldwide, including stocks afloat on the oceans. Your company’s budget for the next 6 years for replacing the items your customers are anticipated to use is $2.1 billion. Your company must train 450 new employees a year to keep up with personnel turnover, and those employees must be trained to understand and comply with numerous, strict safety regulations imposed by the Federal Government. Finally, there are the customers–over 200,000 of them–whom your company supplies with items from its inventory. They are extremely demanding and unforgiving, and they will not tolerate late delivery or insufficient quantities of items, or items that malfunction or do not work as intended, or shipments that do not contain the items they ordered. Oh, by the way, your customers’ very lives depend on the received items working as advertised.
Welcome to the world of Marine Corps ground ammunition, referred to in the military supply vocabulary as “class V(W).” The management of the Corps’ ground ammunition program, headed by the Program Manager for Ammunition (PM-Ammo) at the Marine Corps Systems Command, is big business. However, managing the Corps’ ground ammunition is not simply a matter of keeping worldwide track of 337 major end items, each with its own Department of Defense Identification Code (DODIC). Many of these items include component items with separate national stock numbers (NSNs). There are literally thousands of NSNs to keep track of, not including the lot numbers assigned to batches of a specific NSN-designated item by its manufacturer. Items with the same lot number are assigned one of 15 condition codes by DOD, and those condition codes can change throughout the life cycle of those items. Items with the same lot number at the same storage location also can have different condition codes. For example, the portable Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System (APOBS) is one of the 337 items managed by PM-Ammo. It incorporates components with different NSNs, including the motor, grenade, fuze, detonation cord, and packaging, and each of those components potentially can have different lot numbers and condition codes.
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To improve the management of ground ammunitions and thus improve support to logisticians and operating forces in the field, the Marine Corps is developing several information systems that will increase the availability, timeliness, and accuracy of ammunition information.
Managing Ground Ammunition
The mission of PM-Ammo is to conduct limited research, development, and acquisition and execute lifecycle management support of all conventional ground ammunition Marine Forces require to train for, and successfully conduct, expeditionary maneuver warfare. PM-Ammo’s corporate headquarters is located at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, and includes the PM, Deputy PM, and three divisions: Inventory Management and Systems, Ammunition Programs and Budget, and Logistics (see the chart on page 12). PM-Ammo is also the sponsor of occupational field 23, Ammunition and Explosive Ordnance Disposal, for the Corps’ ammunition community, both officer (restricted only) and enlisted. [”Restricted” refers to warrant officers and limited-duty officers. “Unrestricted” refers to the rest of the officer community. All officers in the Marine Corps ammunition community are restricted.]
PM-Ammo is responsible for managing the following types of ground ammunition–
* Small arms.
* Medium caliber.
* Mortar.
* Artillery.
* Tank.
* Grenade and pyrotechnics.
* Demolition.
* Rockets and missiles.
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It does not, however, manage Navy-owned aviation ordnance used by Marine Corps aviation units; the Deputy Commandant for Aviation is responsible for those requirements.
Ammunition Knowledge Management Portal
A significant information technology (IT) enabler used to provide meaningful and timely information in the conduct of the Corps’ ammunition business is a comprehensive repository of ground ammunition data with its own Web site known as the Ammunition Knowledge Management Portal (KMP). Access to the KMP is controlled for security reasons.
The KMP includes data on the following ammunition-related subjects–
* Class V(W) ground ammunition assets.
* Life-cycle management.
* Marine Corps stockpile by age.
* Malfunction histories.
* Notice of Ammunition Reclassification (NAR) histories.
* Engineering change proposals.
* Lot manufacture dates.
* Current NARs.
* Muzzle velocity adjustments.
* “Preferred for training lots” ammunition (a classification of ammunition that should be used for training).
The KMP is an evolving service provided to the Marine Corps ammunition enterprise that is updated systematically to provide “added value” to the viewer. Resource links are regularly added to the alphabetized directory located on the KMP home page.