Back before we had the magazine we now call “Electronics Engineering & Logistics Quarterly, we had a periodical called “Systems Times” that everyone in the Systems Directorate read.
Today I want to share an article I wrote for the Spring 2001 edition as we were implementing the first bits of ALMIS. I share it because some of what we’re doing now is completing work started under the visionary leadership of people in G-SEA who fought hard to fund the ALMIS project we executed at AR&SC.
Here’s the short version of what we were trying to do with ALMIS AC&I funds then. I share it just so you have an awareness of ALMIS history at a very high level.
In short, ALMIS is an Office of Aeronautical Engineering (G-SEA) sponsored initiative to improve aviation logistics by:
- (1) integrating AMMIS (Aviation Maintenance Management Information System) and ACMS (Aircraft Maintenance Management System), the two legacy systems that manage aviation information, so maintenance data from ACMS can be used with the supply and operational data in AMMIS to make better decisions to get the right parts in the right place at the right time;
- (2) developing a browser-based application that eliminates the paper based processes and the dedicated data entry personnel who input data into the legacy systems and captures valuable data that had not been captured before (like discrepancy and corrective action for non-scheduled maintenance); and
- (3) developing a decision support system that makes the information in the system available for people who need it to make better decisions.
If you’re willing to take five minutes to read the whole article, you can find it here.
The most important thing I’d like to share is this little bit:
By establishing the integrated architecture and delivering the first modules of EAL and DSS, the groundwork is in place to build on the proven successes of ACMS and AMMIS and provide an aviation logistics information system that leverages information to provide effective, affordable capability for our customers.
When I took credit then for establishing an “integrated architecture,” I was describing a system that integrated aviation applications. We also took credit for using the same Cognos suite of tools that were by many other applications.
Although the integration was of a much more limited scope with ALMIS than it is for CG-LIMS, I now believe developing and implementing a repeatable way of integrating applications within our service oriented architecture is going to be the real success of CG-LIMS. Yes, we will be implementing a EAM tool and perhaps a content management tool, and some other COTS tools. But the real value in my mind is going to be establishing the way we’re going to integrate those solutions wihin the rest of the Coast Guard’s information architecture.
We’re starting small. In the first increment, we had expected to have a limited integration between EAL and the COTS EAM tool to pass aging parameters. That may sound trivial, but doing it in a way that can expand in scope to other applications, doing it in a way that is affordable and supportable in the long run, is going to be one of the hardest and most important things we do.
Thoughts anyone?
CG-LIMS 
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