logistical support

Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) (by Aroop) is the disciplined and unified management of the technical logistic disciplines that plan and develop Logistics Support Requirements for military forces and which will ensure System product Quality in terms of reliability, availability, maintainability and testability (RAMT). ILS is sometimes integrated with System Safety engineering (RAMS). In general, this means that ILS is the management organization that plans and directs the activities of many technical disciplines associated with the identification and development of logistics support and system RAMT/S requirements for military systems or equipment / parts. There are comparable organizations outside the military which provide the same capabilities. In a commercial company this organization may be called product support, customer service or many other similar names. ILS is a technique introduced by the US Army to ensure that the supportability of an equipment item is considered during its design and development. The technique was adopted by the UK MOD in 1993 and made compulsory for the procurement of the majority of MOD equipment. The end goal of ILS is to create systems that last longer and require less support and thereby to Save Money by achieving a higher return on long term investments. The aim of ILS is to address three aspects of supportability during the acquisition and whole life cycle of the system / equipment. The word system is here defined as: "The whole composite of hardware, software, personnel, procedures, tools and facilities. The elements hereof are used together in the intended operational or support environment to perform a given task or achieve a specific purpose, support or mission requirement"

Influence on Design. Integrated Logistic Support will provide important means to identify (as early as possible) reliability issues / problems and can initiate system or part design improvements based on reliability, maintainability, testability or system availability analysis (for example by the proper use of detailed functional and/or piece part FMECA techniques, Event tree and Fault tree analysis / assessments, Reliability Block Diagrams, Importance measurements, Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) / Maintenance steering Group 3 (=civil aerospace variant of RCM) and Monte-Carlo techniques). Influence on design can also be the result of the use of a Failure Reporting and Corrective Action Systems (FRACAS) during in-service phases. ILS can have a strong link with System Safety engineering due to the common use of several sources of data (like: failure mode- and failure rate- and failure mechanism information, system effect (criticality) behavior, fault detection, human error (maintenance task related or operational task related) predictions, human factors, and system basic reliability or operational reliability (availability) calculations. ILS is an iterative process during the design of the equipment to ensure that supportability aspects are adequately addressed. This ensures that user maintenance and routine servicing tasks are minimized (optimized) and can be performed with sufficient ease, and that utilization of existing tools and techniques is maximized. Further, it may be required to demonstrate supportability of the equipment during LMMD (Logistics, Maintenance & Manpower Demonstration) to ensure that supportability has been adequately addressed. ILS can furthermore provide input or be part of a Quality Control system, because it has the capability to identify the most critical parts for system operation and support, which should need the most attention from a quality point of view.