ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Herrumph

If only brilliant minds like Kevan Jones' and Margaret Hodge's had been in charge for a decade or so. We could have sorted all this out!

NAO out to justify their own existence again. Bunch of bean counters who have never done anything useful in their own lives but are blessed with absolute 20/20 hindsight. Strange how they were never able to see all the dodgy behaviour of their own boss a few years back!

If the MoD is expected to hold enough stock to cover an infinite number of contingency Ops then there is bound to be wastage. Unless of course all the worse case scenarios happen to occur - in which case we'd be well fucked!

Current head of the NAO is Amyas Morse, who lends his name to this report. Before joining the NAO he was 2nd PUS at the MoD for a number of years.

He has, therefore, commissioned a report into his own previous incompetence.

Sheer genius.

Smart procurement would have worked had not the concept not been riddled with wrong assumptions made by desk jockeys about how the military supply chain worked and it's biggest consumers (arguably the REME) requirements.

Fcuking squalid, incompetent theory and it showed on Ops. Terrible, disgusting way to ensure battle-winning equipment was kept from the troops.

Not that I'm bitter but I'm going to have another glass of wine.

Originally Posted by beanhead

It's all part of the MoD grand plan, MJDI will be replaced in 2015 by the centralised Base Inventory Warehouse Management System (BIWMS). Some Loggie units will go and the inventory reduced on a grand scale (no stores = no logistics specialists). Supply & transportation will be outsourced. Good time to join Eddie Stobart though..........

BIWMS (The S stands for Services by the way) is a set of services based on the MIRO GoldESP COTS package. It is not currently scheduled to replace MJDI at all, although GoldESP could do this. (The Saudi's have just purchased the system to replace all Logs & Engineering systems). However BIWMS will produce a set of services that will lead to replacement of SS III, SCCS, CRISP, BODMS, WTMS, AMPS, ASTRID, AMANDA as a starter. Release 1 will be out early next year.


















,It should have replaced

Originally Posted by Fat_Cav

Nothing new.

On my Global Provision Managers course in the 90's, we had story after story about the volume of inventory held in Donny & Bicester. On particular point was a common theme to hold up to seven years of Land Rover spares. Condsidering the fact that LR is a UK firm with a good supply chain itself, why were we holding so much?

How ironic it always was that the emphasis at Deepcut was always placed on the Field Force Coy's/CS Sqns* to provision correctly and manage their stocks-holdings, yet the depots were spunking money up the wall by over-procuring and storing inventory on an eye-watering level.

*- Delete dependant on how old & crusty you are

My bold. the depots don't decide what has to be stored, neither do they purchase inventory - that is the job of Project Teams in Abbey Wood, none of whom (currently) have to pay the cost of storage and therefore have little incentive not to purchase in bulk.

They'll have to change soon though because the depots are full of gash kit and they'll have to fund alternative solutions to store the new equipment they're buying hand over fist........

OK - my knowledge is about how the retail chains do their IT. This is roughly as follows:

1) A retail chain has a series of standalone operational systems. Each controls a specific aspect of the operation. These change with time and may not be fully compatible with each other - for example, the purchase order system in Europe may not be fully compatible with the purchase order system in North America.

2) Data is transferred from each operational system into a data warehouse. This is the system of record. It is designed so that even if the operational systems change, the data from those operational systems is stored in a standardised format - thus preserving continuity of information.

Because of this standardised format of information, purchase order data from Europe can be combined with that North America and looked at as a whole.

3) Where necessary, subsets of data are transferred from the data warehouse into data marts. These subsets of data can be used for standard reports - often called dashboards.

4) Other sub-sets of data can be transferred into analytic sandboxes - there are used to seek insights from the data. this is often called data mining.

So you can have a multiplicity of operational systems, pull the data together into a data warehouse, then do meaningful reporting (data mart) and data analysis (sandbox) with subsets of data. [Sounds simple - but its actually a pretty complicated task].

I understand from previous threads that the MOD have a lot of custom/legacy systems that would be difficult to update and standardise - some of which carry secret information. But presumably the MOD has the ability to bring together information from all those legacy systems into a data warehouse so they can get the big picture of what is going on?

(I'm skating gracefully past the question of whether the government has the ability to put together complicated IT systems without fcuking them up).

Then - at least in theory - when a weapon system is cut back or scrapped, someone should be able to go into the system and produce a custom report identifying all parts in store and whether they are needed. Similarly, someone might also be able to run a report identifying whether it is more cost effective to hold parts in a few or many locations.

Just curious about how good the MOD is at joined up IT thinking.

Wordsmith

Originally Posted by Wordsmith

OK - my knowledge is about how the retail chains do their IT. This is roughly as follows:

1) A retail chain has a series of standalone operational systems. Each controls a specific aspect of the operation. These change with time and may not be fully compatible with each other - for example, the purchase order system in Europe may not be fully compatible with the purchase order system in North America.

2) Data is transferred from each operational system into a data warehouse. This is the system of record. It is designed so that even if the operational systems change, the data from those operational systems is stored in a standardised format - thus preserving continuity of information.

Because of this standardised format of information, purchase order data from Europe can be combined with that North America and looked at as a whole.

3) Where necessary, subsets of data are transferred from the data warehouse into data marts. These subsets of data can be used for standard reports - often called dashboards.

4) Other sub-sets of data can be transferred into analytic sandboxes - there are used to seek insights from the data. this is often called data mining.

So you can have a multiplicity of operational systems, pull the data together into a data warehouse, then do meaningful reporting (data mart) and data analysis (sandbox) with subsets of data. [Sounds simple - but its actually a pretty complicated task].

I understand from previous threads that the MOD have a lot of custom/legacy systems that would be difficult to update and standardise - some of which carry secret information. But presumably the MOD has the ability to bring together information from all those legacy systems into a data warehouse so they can get the big picture of what is going on?

(I'm skating gracefully past the question of whether the government has the ability to put together complicated IT systems without fcuking them up).

Then - at least in theory - when a weapon system is cut back or scrapped, someone should be able to go into the system and produce a custom report identifying all parts in store and whether they are needed. Similarly, someone might also be able to run a report identifying whether it is more cost effective to hold parts in a few or many locations.

Just curious about how good the MOD is at joined up IT thinking.

Wordsmith

I've heard all of the phrases in bold with regard to BIWMS so we live in hope!

Originally Posted by Bubbles_Barker

I've heard all of the phrases in bold with regard to BIWMS so we live in hope!

I live in hope that the project has the full implementation costs built into it. Setting up a system like I detailed above is an extremely complicated business that calls for the 'best and the brightest'. That is very expensive and the tendency is to trim back costs and take short cuts on the implementation. That's pretty well going to guarantee you a botched set up that'll have frequent bugs.

Were I the MOD procurement team, I would go direct to the companies supplying the software and hardware - you are going to pay a little more than if you go to the big consulting companies, but you have a better chance of getting the systems up and running correctly. That's because the implementation teams will be able to go directly back to the pertinent subject matter experts in the companies concerned and get advice on the best way of doing things.

It's far more difficult for the consulting firms to do that - they just don't have the same lines of communication. In addition, the level of checks the software/hardware companies put in place to establish the competence of any consulting companies they're partnered with vary considerably. For some of the bigger software companies, once you become an 'approved partner', you can claim to be able to install any software - irrespective of your level of expertise. Other software companies insist you pass the internal course before you can claim to be an expert on specific software packages.

So lets hope the MOD is not cutting corners on implementation costs - because it'll bit them in the arse when the project is up and running.

Wordsmith

Originally Posted by Bubbles_Barker

My bold. the depots don't decide what has to be stored, neither do they purchase inventory - that is the job of Project Teams in Abbey Wood, none of whom (currently) have to pay the cost of storage and therefore have little incentive not to purchase in bulk.

They'll have to change soon though because the depots are full of gash kit and they'll have to fund alternative solutions to store the new equipment they're buying hand over fist........

It was a generic term. I'm aware of who does what, where and when