In April, the DoD took a significant step forward in sustaining the joint force with the release of DoD Instruction (DoDI) 3110.05, Sustainment Health Metrics in Support of Materiel Availability. I want to ensure that our sustainment communities are fully aware of and tracking this pivotal update. This instruction evolves our strategic frameworks for measuring sustainment performance throughout the lifecycle of our equipment by establishing materiel availability (A-"m"), operational availability (A-"o"), and the newly introduced cost per day of availability (C/DA) as the superordinate measurements of performance.
- A-"m": Provides a macro perspective of the total active inventory, allowing transparency into the effectiveness of the entire sustainment enterprise and extending beyond mere presence to operational readiness.
- A-"o": Delivers a micro perspective, reflecting the readiness of primary mission active inventory systems within operational units, thus offering a clear view of front-line serviceability.
- C/DA: Ties operational effectiveness to cost, offering a crucial metric for identifying and addressing cost inefficiencies within the fleet.
These metrics augment the traditional readiness measurements to enable a more proactive and predictive management of our fleet’s serviceability. They allow the DoD to measure and assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the DoD sustainment enterprise; A-"m" and A-"o" measure effectiveness, while C/DA measures efficiency. Together the metrics help isolate strategic sustainment challenges and inform resource allocation decisions.
Enabling Holistic Fleet Management Strategy
The department has long inserted sustainment requirements into the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System process. These sustainment key performance parameters ensure that original equipment manufacturers adhere to specified thresholds of availability, reliability, and cost requirements throughout development phases and during operational test and evaluation.
However, after deployment, our Services often default to using conventional readiness metrics. These metrics predominantly offer a snapshot of a unit’s ability to execute its mission. Based on the availability and serviceability of personnel and equipment, these metrics, albeit comprehensive, are fundamentally retrospective. This reactive approach is predicated on identifying problems at emergence and responding to failure or near-failure.
To transcend this, we have evolved our strategic frameworks to be proactive and offer a holistic approach to fleet management. This strategy enables the following improvements:
- Surveillance of fleet equipment by sustainers at all echelons and use of data-driven decisions to implement mitigations within their control.
- Precise identification of assets that minimally contribute to readiness through low availability, thus influencing strategic decisions regarding resource distribution and maintenance scheduling.
- Operational and strategic-level understanding of sustainment resource consumption and the ability to implement preemptive solutions.
Institutionalizing these measures enables a comprehensive understanding of fleet performance over time. This understanding fosters better resource allocation, maintenance scheduling, and overall operational readiness. This enables sustainers to identify the key availability degraders across the fleet and to implement targeted actions to improve the performance of our sustainment enterprise, including depot maintenance, transportation, storage, and processing for the equipment fleets regardless of their location.
This pivot toward a health-centric model complements rather than replaces traditional readiness. Integrating A-"m" and A-"o" into the sustainment business area allows us to measure fleet performance based on expected levels of performance, to enhance root cause analyses, and to inform resource allocation decisions. This transformation enables sustainers in preempting issues through data-driven decision-making processes. By anticipating issues, we foster an environment where resource allocation is strategic, downtime is reduced, and operational readiness is increased.
To illustrate this concept, consider the implementation of these metrics within a fleet management scenario. Imagine a key weapon system fleet experiencing varied availability rates across different units.
With the new metrics — A-"m," A-"o," and C/DA — fleet managers can identify trends and patterns that indicate potential sustainment issues before they result in significant downtime. For instance, they can isolate a maintainer capacity issue at the depot maintenance facility that is increasing the depot turnaround time and causing assets to defer their planned maintenance. Or, if C/DA shows an increasing cost for a particular weapon system, the key degrader can be identified, and targeted maintenance can be scheduled proactively to address the root cause before it affects operational availability. This proactive approach keeps more assets mission ready while optimizing maintenance resources and reducing overall costs.
The updated DoDI 3110.05 is not just an administrative update; it is a strategic overhaul aimed at enhancing how we prioritize resources and manage our equipment fleets more effectively. By embracing a more forward-looking, predictive model, the sustainment community is primed to move beyond traditional readiness metrics. The integration of these measures will revolutionize sustainment decision-making, ensuring that holistic management of the fleet is transparent, visible, predictable, and ready to deliver decisive combat power to the joint force.
Today, we champion the marriage of engineered performance expectations with the realities of the sustainment lifecycle. New metrics — A-"m," A-"o," and C/DA — facilitate a nuanced understanding of fleet performance and guide resource allocation and strategic sustainment initiatives. This alignment deepens our comprehension of fleet performance across time and allows for predictive maintenance at echelon.
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The Honorable Christopher Lowman is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment. He is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Defense on DoD logistics, materiel readiness, and product support. He oversees the Defense Logistics Agency and Defense Microelectronics Activity, and he is the principal logistics official within senior DoD management. He enlisted as a U.S. Marine in 1984 and entered the Army Civil Service as an Army maintenance management intern in 1989. He holds a Master of Science degree from the National War College and a Master of Business Administration degree from Monmouth University.
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This article was published in the fall 2024 issue of Army Sustainment.
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