US Air Force using SaaS solution to optimize supply chain

by Inside Logistics Online Staff

There’s no moving around this cabin: Aviano teams secure cargoNEEDHAM, Massachusetts—The United States Air Force (USAF) has selected the PTC Service Parts Management (SPM) SaaS solution to deliver integrated supply chain planning and enhance weapon systems support at Air Force Sustainment Center (AFSC) locations around the globe.

PTC SPM SaaS is part of the Servigistics suite of Service Lifecycle Management solutions.

The USAF is highly respected for managing one of the most complex supply chains in the world with over 5,000 aircraft, 650,000 items, and supports weapon systems in 1,500 locations across a global theatre of operations. PTC Service Parts Management, delivered as a SaaS model, will enable the USAF to more efficiently manage its supply chain, as well as improve the inventory performance of its operations.

PTC Service Parts Management SaaS will enable the USAF to improve demand forecast accuracy, reduce planning workload, implement comprehensive supply planning with supportability, achieve near real-time supply chain metrics, improve logistics cost estimation, and optimize aircraft availability by location.

By a cloud-based solution, the USAF will be able to collaborate and share information in a safe and reliable DoD compliant environment.

The solution offers the following capabilities:

  • Demand Planning to generate independent (unscheduled) and dependent (scheduled) forecasts, including the expert selection of forecasting algorithms, and the application of causal factors such as flying hours.
  • Inventory Optimization to achieve specified weapon system availability while simultaneously minimizing inventory investment and adhering to financial constraints, combining Readiness Based Sparing (RBS) principles, aircraft uptime, and fill rate optimization along with other business rules.
  • Supply Planning capabilities to produce a supply and distribution plan to correlate repair, purchase, and (re)distribution orders with current or future demands. Distribution planning aligns assets to support weapon system availability and to proactively manage material shortages at maintenance/operating locations.
  • Exception Management with robust error reporting and event management capabilities to alert users to pertinent information, and make autonomous recommendations to reconcile exceptions within discrete planner work queues for demand planning, inventory optimization and supply planning.
  • Performance Management capabilities with analytics, data stratification, metrics, reporting, and dash-boarding capabilities to support root-cause and what-if analyses.

“The USAF has one of the largest, most complex supply chains in the world,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO, PTC. “We are honored that PTC technology will be supporting the USAF as they modernize their highly respected logistics infrastructure.”

PTC Service Parts Management is also being used by leading aerospace and defence organizations, such as the United States Navy, United States Coast Guard, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.

With PTC Service Parts Management, the United States Coast Guard has improved Coast Guard aircraft availability by six percent, reduced mission incapable supply by four percent, improved on-time delivery by 40 percent, and achieved 91 percent service levels – all while reducing operating costs.

The United States Navy also achieves significant savings every year using PTC Service Parts Management.