Downloaded from https://www.everyspec.com MIL-HDBK-502: A MIL-HDBK-502: A CQUISITION CQUISITION L OGISTICS OGISTICS a. Maintenance Planning . It is important that maintenance planning tasks be defined in measurable terms, with threshold percentages or ranges provided. The repair strategy must be clearly envisioned before the ORD is written. The cost/benefit ratio between organic repair and contractor support must be scrutinized before any decisions are made. Contractor support costs must include estimates for increased cost, and DoD incurred costs for life support, security, and transportation in a forward deployed (hostile) environment.
This is not an area where preconceived notions of what is appropriate (or what works) can be allowed to dominate. b. Support Equipment. In this section “realistic and affordable” are key phrases. “One hundred percent fault isolation” is certainly desirable, but is it realistic? And even if it were, would it be practical, from a financial viewpoint? Common support equipment should be acquired instead of peculiar support equipment when possible and cost effective. c. Human Systems Integration. Manpower issues are crucial to the supportability of many systems. Acceptable risk levels, necessary training levels, manpower ratios, and the like must be addressed as supportability concerns.
Initial and continuing training to maintain operator skills is an important consideration. Given the high level of turnover in military personnel, maintaining operator skill is often a crucial issue. Repair and maintenance personnel also turn over rapidly. Support planning must deal with these issues. d. Computer Resources. This is another area where logisticians needs to have done their homework. What constraints are necessary in order to provide interfaces with other services? What is the tradeoff when X architecture provides a desirable improvement in operational availability but denies access to Y communications network used by another service?
The logistician must assess the impact of system changes and determine necessary adjustments to the logistics structure. e. Other Logistics Considerations. Provisioning strategies and special packaging, handling, and transportation considerations need to be addressed here. Unique data requirements are defined here, but remember that data requirements should be kept to a minimum, and data should be provided in contractor format whenever possible. Logisticians must know how and when they will use the data they request, and they must be able to distinguish between “nice to have to cover possible contingencies” data and essential data.
Packaging, handling, transportation, facilities, disposal, and environmental impact considerations are far from the forefront for system designers, developers, and users, but they are important and potentially expensive considerations. Logisticians must understand the potential impact of these issues on the system from its inception, and must raise these issues whenever they impact on program planning. 6-3