Enabling Interoperability in a NATO Environment through
Maintenance and Repair Activities
Concept Paper
1.1 Objective
As a part of its ongoing Sense and Respond
Logistics initiative, the United States Marine
Corps has been working with the Defense
Procurement and Acquisition Policy (DPAP),
Program Development and Implementation
(PDI) office to determine the necessary
processes, technologies and business rules that
need to be utilized to allow easy integration of
US maintenance and logistics support in a
multinational environment. DPAP has been
sponsoring an effort to examine methods of
implementing Item Unique Identification
(IUID) in the coalition environment. As an
early adopter of IUID the USMC has a desire
to harvest the benefits of IUID in all
environments. The NATO Maintenance and
Supply Agency (NAMSA) has a key function
in the NATO and allied nation supply chain
providing assets to theater as well as
integrating with NATO codification. As the
USMC national assets tasked with providing
substantial repair and parts stockage, the
Maintenance Centers at Albany, GA and
Barstow, CA play a crucial role in ensuring
the readiness, survivability and lethality of
USMC ground combat equipment.
Having successfully completed the first phase
of this effort, the CTMA team will endeavor
to follow the same methods and protocols to
facilitate interoperability of Maintenance and
Repair activities in a Coalition Environment
harvesting IUID data across US service
components, US Maintenance Centers and
NATO Maintenance Centers. This data will
serve as the enabler to allow maintenance
activities to be conducted within and across
joint services as well as international coalition
environments. The effort will result in a field
evolution to showcase NATO interoperability
which will serve as a report on the feasibility,
lessons learned, and opportunities for
improvement in process and approach. This
evolution will test visibility and
interoperability of data between a
COTS/GOTS US information system,
NAMSA Automated Information Systems
(AIS) and the USMC Maintenance Centers at
Albany, GA and Barstow, CA. This visibility
and these transactions will show basic
functionality of Coalition Logistics
Interoperability (CLI) (a key logistics enabler
in coalition operations) and serve as a
cornerstone function as the USMC evolves to
a fully functional Naval Logistics Integration
(NLI) initiative in the Enterprise Sense and
Respond environment.
The goals of this project are:

Building on the progress made on previous
NCMS project work, expand
interoperability of maintenance and
Serialized Item Management (SIM) data
into United States COTS and potentially
GOTS applications.

Develop the Maintenance and Repair Data
Exchange (DEX) to communicate
maintenance data in a Coalition
environment.

Make SIM data available to the
Maintenance Centers
This information, as disclosed to DOD, shall be protected as the proprietary and confidential information of NCMS and its members who are
named herein in accordance with Cooperative Agreement No. DASW01-98-2-0002 and applicable laws and regulations.
1

Operationalize IUID in an interservice
environment for SIM, providing the ability
to transfer an item between service
components without losing insight to the
cumulative history of an item’s
maintenance, supply, and usage.

Improve traceability of items used in
theater and subsequently returned to US
DoD.

Developing data exchanges using ISO
standard 10303 Application Protocol 239
Product Life Cycle Support (PLCS)
making it cheaper and easier to make
changes to future information systems.

Utilize and implement the Maintenance
and Repair DEX and demonstrate the
use of the DEX for receipt, capture, and
processing of item level data.

Integrate current COTS and USMC
“bridge technologies” and programs of
record into an international environment to
support maintenance actions.

Improve weapons system readiness and
availability
Provide improved item visibility for the
warfighter

1.2 Business Case
1.2.1 Statement of Problem
Given the backdrop of current/future US fiscal
realities and understanding how they may
impact future evolutions, the US will need to
leverage any/all opportunities to ‘wean out’
redundant/unnecessary costs/processes and
time. In current and future environments,
nearly all significant military operations
engaged in by the Marine Corps are/will be
conducted jointly with the other US service
components, as well as with our allied
international coalition partners. Developing
the key tools/technologies/processes that can
leverage the benefits associated with Coalition
Operations will be paramount to success in
challenging, fiscal operational environs.
Traditional execution of maintenance and
logistical support is focused on supportability
as a standalone service with some interaction
at the DoD joint level. Typical of this strategy
is a significant redundancy of parts stocks,
consumable inventory, and maintenance
capability, commonly referred to as the “Iron
Mountain”. Ironically a significant number of
repair and support items are common across
the spectrum of Warfighters. Unfortunately,
to date there does not exist a simple means to
share and support common items in a joint or
coalition environment. Significant cost in
terms of transport, sustainment, and support is
incurred by the different cooperating elements
without consideration of economies of scale
for sharable support items that could be
obtained. In an era of limited resources,
leveraging common capabilities to execute
operations is a desired end state.
1.2.2 Background Information
Within the framework of Sense and
Respond logistics, the Marine Corps has a
desire to reduce Total Life Cycle System
Management (TLSM) costs and leverage
sustainability in a joint environment where
possible. To this end, the National Center
for Manufacturing Sciences has supported
the Marine Corps in a series of Sense and
Respond logistics demonstrations, technical
development initiatives and spiraling
technology efforts to understand, develop
and institute a true Sense and Respond
capability. To date several key technologies
have been developed and matured. During
This information, as disclosed to DOD, shall be protected as the proprietary and confidential information of NCMS and its members who are
named herein in accordance with Cooperative Agreement No. DASW01-98-2-0002 and applicable laws and regulations.
2
this same time these technologies have been
integrated into USMC Programs of Record
to ensure utility for the Warfighter. Under a
2011 NCMS project, the USMC was able to
develop the Shared Asset Database that
provided the capability for Coalition
partners to share important weapon system
information by harvesting the benefits of
IUID. The next logical step to embrace this
functionality was taken in June 2011 in the
joint coalition environment / NATO
exercise Coalition Warrior Interoperability
Exercise (CWIX), at the JFTC in
Bydgoszcz, Poland. Logistical data was
successfully exchanged between the United
States (via JAMISS), SILAD (the Italian
asset management database) and the
simulated NAMSA shareable asset
database. Additionally, a cross-domain
solution for data transfer was accomplished
utilizing RS Gate (Germany).
1.3 Technology/Project
Approach
The USMC has a GOTS tool that provides the
capability to capture the IUID and related
individual item data. COTS products are also
available that can support this need. Both
COTS and the current GOTS application
have data base capability that need data and
operational scenarios to test and fully
demonstrate the processes and data exchange
requirements in order to share item level data
across DoD, NATO and allied nations forces.
Leveraging best in class options of either
COTS or existing USMC maintenance tools,
integration points will be evaluated to allow
for seamless flow of necessary maintenance
information between USMC operating units,
joint and allied forces, and Maintenance
Depots.
To accomplish this, work will be done to
ensure compliance with International data
exchange specifications for reusability
purposes. The International Standards
Organization (ISO) 10303 Standard for the
Exchange of Product Data (STEP) provides a
mechanism that is capable of describing
product data throughout the life cycle. PLCS
defines a data model for product data and
describes a standard methodology to exchange
data. This is identified as a preferred
methodology in NATO STANAG 4461.
DEX methods and standard structures are
managed by the Organization for the
Advancement of Structured Information
Standards (OASIS) which encourages open
collaboration and development of PLCS-based
DEXs.
PLCS DEXs offer an opportunity to establish
international standard data exchange structure
to enable sharing of IUID data. Item level
data is critical in a shared effort, or multinational effort. Access to specific item unique
data enables coalition commanders to have
insight into the full capabilities and condition
of their equipment, thus allowing the logistics
chain clear understanding of item
performance, maintenance, and shared support
attributes.
The vision of joint service and multi-national
logistics begins with the ability to uniquely
identify critical items. The purpose of this
effort is to implement the Maintenance and
Repair DEX and demonstrate the use of the
DEX for receipt, capture, and processing of
item level data.
This effort will demonstrate a scenario
depicting the coordinated physical movement
of assets from an operational environment,
This information, as disclosed to DOD, shall be protected as the proprietary and confidential information of NCMS and its members who are
named herein in accordance with Cooperative Agreement No. DASW01-98-2-0002 and applicable laws and regulations.
3
NAMSA, a maintenance and repair facility or
the USMC Maintenance Centers at Albany or
Barstow. The data structures describing the
assets and the movement will be defined
where necessary based on international
standards. The relevant data messages will be
created and distributed according to the
scenario and the actual physical movement
and change to the assets. The gaps in data,
communication, or technical capability will be
identified and addressed. Existing capabilities
and emerging contingency tools will be
incorporated in the process

Improved global part/LRU visibility and
readiness
1.4.3 Additional Benefits

Integration to US and NATO maintenance
facilities and systems

Building the foundation for successful
Naval Logistics Integration

Consistent with Joint Staff doctrine,
providing a developed tool to support the
Joint Logistics Enterprise
1.5 Government Participants
1.4 Projected Benefits
1.4.1 Financial Benefit
In previous efforts under NCMS significant
study indicated that by providing a
comprehensive S&R logistical support
capability, maintenance activities could enjoy
an approximately 10% reduction in cost.
Additionally, a BCA commissioned by the
Marine Corps demonstrated a several hundred
million dollar cost avoidance in TLCSM when
a true S&RL capability is fielded.
This effort will seek to validate that this
savings can be attributed to adopting a
Coalition Logistics Interoperability approach
to Maintenance and Repair.
Improved weapons system readiness and
availability

Class IX inventory reductions
Headquarters Marine Corps, I&L
(LPV)

The Defense Procurement and
Acquisition Policy (DPAP), Program
Development and Implementation
(PDI) office DLA

Maintenance Center Albany, GA

Maintenance Center Barstow, CA
1.6 Deliverables

Development and execution of a
cooperative maintenance management
scenario to support CLI.

A Maintenance and Repair DEX for use
in CLI.

Assessment and possible inclusion of US
maintenance technologies leveraging IUID
to support CLI in field operations.

Assessment and possible inclusion of
COTS maintenance technologies
leveraging IUID to support CLI in field
operations.
1.4.2 Readiness Benefits


This information, as disclosed to DOD, shall be protected as the proprietary and confidential information of NCMS and its members who are
named herein in accordance with Cooperative Agreement No. DASW01-98-2-0002 and applicable laws and regulations.
4

Conduct of Maintenance and Repair CLI
demonstration in field operations
evolution.

Detailed system diagram that depicts the
information flow of a Maintenance and
Repair evolution, inclusive of WAWF in a
US unit operating in a Coalition Logistic
Environment.

Lessons learned from both NATO
coalition evolution and field operations
maintenance and repair demonstration.

CTMA quarterly and final reports.
1.7 Period of Performance
The duration for this project is twelve months.
1.8 Deployment Plan
The team will develop a tiered, spiral
execution strategy that will conduct the
scenario in a phased approach. The first spiral
will be a DEX only that will validate the
potential to further develop the DEX and
utilize it to integrate the different tools. The
second spiral will be actual maintenance and
supply activities, in field operations, that
leverage a NATO support effort.
This information, as disclosed to DOD, shall be protected as the proprietary and confidential information of NCMS and its members who are
named herein in accordance with Cooperative Agreement No. DASW01-98-2-0002 and applicable laws and regulations.
5