LRC's Global Mission

Written by Patrick E. Clarke

The Logistics Readiness Center at the Communications and Electronics Command is a vast organization.

It has to be.

LRC’s mission is to provide global command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) logistics support to the warfighter and coalition forces in a timely, cost-effective manner. LRC prepares and sustains the warfighter for combat and later resets forces to combat readiness following deployment.

The LRC has approximately 3,000 personnel, according to Dave Sharman, acting director of the LRC, including about 1,700 Army civilians, 1,300 contractors and between 50 to 60 soldiers, sailors and airmen.

The LRC has a Logistics and Engineering Operations Directorate to handle reset management, product line funding, and supply and maintenance processes. It has a Readiness Directorate that handles electronic sustainment support centers, fieldings, new equipment training and includes the Logistics Assistance Program (LAP), which gives the LRC a global presence in units on the battlefield. The LRC also has four, commodity-oriented directorates that directly support the program executive officers at Fort Monmouth, N.J., in intelligence and electronic warfare and sensors programs, command and control and aviation programs, communications programs, and communications security and information security programs. These four commodity directorates cover the entire C4ISR arena. The Security Assistance Management Directorate is the international facet of the LRC and provides C4ISR support to allied nations and coalition partners through foreign military sales.

This fiscal year, it is projected that there will be over $1 billion of C4ISR systems offered to foreign nations through the foreign military sales process.

The LRC is also responsible for the National Inventory Control Point (NICP), which provides spares and supplies in response to requests from soldiers. The NICP’s 300-item managers handled approximately $1.7 billion in spares that were purchased or repaired in fiscal year 2007, according to Sharman.

There are other directorates, offices and smaller units. To help put the scope and reach of the LRC into perspective, just from the supply standpoint, Sharman said every day the LRC:

• ships 1,200 items
  
• opens 1,700 repair orders
  
• processes 1,600 requisitions from customers, which range from an image intensifier to an $80,000 radar system spare
  
• processes 2,700 receipts from material the center purchases and repairs
  
• awards over $4 million in new buys for spare parts contracts
  
• calculates demand requirements on 80 items for the warfighter that may lead to a repair or acquisition effort.<p>

Resetting the force is a major initiative, with just under half a billion dollars dedicated to this effort, according to Sharman. “All military, contractor and sub-vendor assets in the industrial base are brought to bear,” said Sharman.

Two key determiners of reset priorities are the status of equipment that has come in from the field and past maintenance trends.

ThalesRaytheon Systems (TRS), of Fullerton, Calif., is one of the contractors involved in the reset effort, particularly in the repair of the Firefinder radars, according to Sharman. The medium range TPQ-36 and the long range TPQ-37 Firefinders are precision radar systems designed to locate hostile rocket, mortar and artillery firing locations as well as provide precise friendly-fire adjustment. ThalesRaytheon Systems’ battlefield radar organization provides a wide range of products and services to the LRC in direct support of the warfighter, according to Steven R. Bruce, Firefinder product line manager for the ThalesRaytheon team.

“Spare parts production is the largest effort, with over 56,000 parts ordered since 2004,” said Bruce. “The ability to work closely with LRC to identify critical needs allows us to prioritize delivery of those parts, resulting in improved radar availability and depot throughput. The combined efforts of the LRC, Tobyhanna Army Depot, Tobyhanna, Pa. and our Raytheon Indianapolis depot have more than tripled the number of radar refurbishments each year compared to pre-2004 rates.”

TRS also provides program integration management services to the LRC, assisting them in the requirements and activities coordination of the Firefinder community at large, according to Bruce.

Bruce said the sharing of data has been one of the biggest logistical problems facing TRS, as each organization uses different tools to communicate supply, demand and forecasting for spare parts. “But, the ability to share data has been significantly improved with the implementation of a Total Asset Visibility database, along with our Docushare and Army Knowledge Online portals,” Bruce said. “These have established common terminology and tools for sharing data across all organizations.”

TRS also maintains engineers and technicians that support the U.S. Army as needed with additional technical expertise. The LRC has its own experts who it sends out into the field. Known as logistics assistance representatives (LARs), approximately 270 of them will be in the field during fiscal year 2008.

“They’re Department of the Army civilians who cover areas involving the complete C4ISR spectrum to include communications, sensors and avionics and power generation,” said Sharman. “They are to serve as the commanding general’s representative to that unit, supporting the commander and the soldier.”

On any given day, the LRC has 50 LARS in southwest Asia. “We’ve got people who’ve deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan up to eight times since 2003,” said Sharman.

ITT Corporation’s assistance to the LRC might also include having representatives in theater. “We are partnered with the LRC and Tobyhanna Army Depot,” said Joanne Powell, vice-president and director of communications and networking for ITT.

“We were able to go from reset and refurbishment of 1,000 Single Channel Ground and Airborne System Radios (SINCGARS) per month to 6,000 per month without missing a delivery and without expanding production—so we kept costs to the Army down,” said Powell. “We also developed such lean processes that there are virtually no scraps.” By lean, Powell is referring to Lean Six Sigma, which is a business process improvement methodology. Lean is about speed and efficiency. Six Sigma is about precision and accuracy—leading to data-driven decisions.

“The most difficult thing about increasing the number of SINCGARS radios that were reset and refurbished is that we had to instill some sense of urgency in our component providers,” said Powell. “So, we had to incentivize the number of components coming in. Then, as one of our team leaders said, ‘We had the trucks coming in on two wheels.’”

ITT, the LRC and Tobyhanna also held a kaizen concerning the process of resetting and refurbishing SINCGARS radios. “Kaizen basically means to sit and map out the process from step one to step whatever,” said Powell. The idea is to look at what the process is today. Then, look at where things could be streamlined.

“If a process takes 296 days, for example, and can be whittled down by 40 days, that becomes very significant,” said Powell.

A major outcome of the kaizan with the LRC and Tobyhanna was the establishment of a SINCGARS forward support activity in Baghdad that began this month (October). “We found that as many as 42 percent of the radios that were being sent stateside for repair were sent back as ‘no evidence of failure found,’” explained Powell.

“If those radios are found at the point of origin, or close to it, tested and returned, that will be a big savings in time and money,” said Powell.

One ITT employee and one Tobyhanna employee are working in concert at the forward support activity. Powell points out that people think of SINCGARS radios as just the transmitter and receiver. But, as SINCGARS is a software-defined radio with lots of capability, there are a number of ancillary items that need to be reset and refurbished, such as cables, antenna and power amplifiers. ITT Corporation has fielded over 350,000 SINCGARS over the years, not all of them to the United States. “Our turnaround time is 120 days because of the efficiencies we’ve developed,” said Powell.

ITT will be part of a major reset reintegration effort with the U.S. Army Fifth Corps, U.S. European Command. “When a unit comes back from a combat rotation, equipment is de-installed—everything involved with a particular product is taken,” said Powell. “We might be dealing with a tank, a humvee or an aircraft.” Then, the equipment is reintegrated—ensuring everything is in working condition. “So, the warfighter is ready for the next deployment,” she said.

The process is done almost in assembly line fashion, but it’s done at the unit’s location. “That’s key—because then the unit is still able to support other contingencies if needed,” said Powell. She expects that ITT will expand to reintegration with CONUS units.

The ITT Night Vision division also plays a large part in LRC reset efforts. “We support the LRC with a diverse product portfolio, not only image intensifier tube, but system replacement parts used by the LRC to replace battle-worn ground, aviation and night vision goggles, and whatever else the LRC has to maintain,” said Don Morello, director, U.S. government marketing for the ITT Night Vision division.

ITT Night Vision undertook a significant capacity expansion in order to better meet customer needs. The expansion included:

• Additional employees
  
• New buildings
  
• Extensions of existing building
  
• Upgraded work areas
  

The expansion resulted in reducing cycle times by a forecasted 20 days and increasing product quantity to achieve an additional 61,000 image intensifier tubes a year while simultaneously increasing the quality of those tubes, according to Morello.

“We’re on a journey to lean manufacturing—using the Lean Six Sigma tools to eliminate waste,” said Morello.

ThalesRaytheon also is on the continuous improvement track. There is a major reliability and maintainability improvement program underway for the TPQ-37 radar, according to Bruce. “Significant improvements in the transmitter and radar processor hardware will improve radar availability by 90 percent while significantly reducing the time and expertise required to maintain this equipment,” said Bruce. “Production on this improvement kit is planned for 2008.”

Added Sharman of the LRC: “Basically, the LRC is equivalent to a Fortune 500 performer.” But he points out one major distinction: Performance in the LRC really is a matter of life and death. ♦