The ILS Manager oversees all logistics functions for a program, including planning, personnel management, product development, and cost accounting. They establish processes and plans, integrate logistics with engineering, and ensure the team has what they need to complete the logistics work in a timely and cost-effective manner. The ILS Manager acts as the director for the logistics program parallel to the overall system program.
2. INTRO
ILS Management can take on many different shapes, as a contract may
dictate. In this presentation, I will address a classic view of ILS
management germane to the acquisition logistics process. The ILS
Manager has a dynamic set of tasks to perform that exhibit a significant
complexity. In many ways (and most times), it is no different than
staffing, planning, leading, and reporting at the level of a Program
Manager. The subject matter spans the breadth and depth of the entire
program and often requires a significant staff to implement a parallel,
shadow-like effort.
3. ILS Manager Key Functions
Program Staff Liaison
Personnel Guidance and Leadership
ILS Program Planning
Product Development and Scheduling
Product Development Oversight
Engineering Liaison
Cost Account Management
Risk management.
4. Program Staff liaison
The ILS Manager directly supports programmatic functions for
business planning and business pursuits:
Proposal support; writing the logistics volume of a proposal; ensuring the detailed
scope fits within the company’s systems engineering model
Establishes the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for logistics products
Establishes the Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS)
Accurately interpreting the Statement of Work (SOW)
Contract negotiations; validating the Performance Work Statements (PWS)
Personnel support; recruiting and hiring a broad sample of skill sets of engineers,
analysts, and documentation specialists
5. Personnel Guidance and Leadership
Managers inherently lead a team of professionals:
Recognize personnel performance
Mitigate personnel issues
Implements personnel training
Communicates weekly on progress (in open forum preferably)
Permits the contiguous nature of logistics to act as the performance driver for the
team
6. The ILS Manager in Short
To summarize the first two slides, I would put forth that the ILS
Manager’s job is to:
Represent the Board of Directors in all things contractually expedient with regard to
logistics requirements
At the same time, makes their boss look good
Ensures the team has everything they need to perform their tasks
Plugs his team into systems engineering
7. ILS Program Planning
The ILS Manager is the Planner-In-Chief. They will establish policy by
writing plans that become the guiding principles for the major elements
of logistics:
Integrated Logistics Plan (ILSP)
Reliability Program Plan (RPP)
Maintenance Support Plan (MSP)
Technical Manual Support Plan (TMSP)
At times, assist customers with their Life Cycle Support Plan (LCSP)
8. Product Development Scheduling
Pursuant to the planning process, product development must be
mapped across the Period of Performance (POP) of the Program:
It will be integrated with the system’s engineering master schedule
Engineering and Logistics milestones will drive the product development schedule
Tasks must have periodic reporting granularity (driven by the company accounting
cycle)
Tasks will be resource loaded with the appropriate skill sets
9. Product Development Oversight
The ILS Manager must implement processes that are achievable and
reportable for the following efforts:
Logistics Engineering
Logistics Analyses
End User Documentation
Each of these efforts are significantly different than the other and each
is dependent upon the completion of the effort that proceeds it
10. Process Implementation
Process implementation should be an exercise in finding efficiencies by
analyzing processes and communicating the inner workings of
processes for each team member on the team:
Draft work flows
Validate the work flow with the SME so that they have a buy-in to their process(es)
Detail each step in the process and assign a weight to each step (minutes on the hour)
11. Estimating and Reporting
For every process step, on every product or study, the time to perform
each step is directly related to the artifact subject to the research
Which is to say, you can factor the weight of each step against the
number of artifacts you are adjudicating – and arrive at a pretty
accurate estimate
The Bill of Materials (BOM) parts count
Number of Engineering drawings
Number of systems
Number of subsystems
Number of LRUs
Number of pages, presentation slides, and illustrations…and many more
12. Product Liability
The ILS Manager must also mitigate any liability issues for all logistics
products
To ensure all products are traceable to the Engineering Technical
Documentation Package (TDP)
To ensure all products are signed off by engineering
Without these formal requirements being met if anything were to
happen (where personnel or equipment are injured or damaged), while
using Logistics processes, it could result in litigation (see slide 6)
13. Engineering Liaison
The ILS Manger defines entrance criteria/engineering data points for
logistics products
Communicates reliability predictions to engineering
Communicates failure predictions to engineering
Communicates maintainability issues to engineering
Operates as part of the systems engineering team
Design Engineering
Test Engineering
Quality Assurance
Safety Factors
Manufacturing Engineering
And Logistics
14. Cost Account management
Reports cost and schedule variances over the whole POP as well as, the
monthly POP:
Reporting on Issues, Variances, Corrective actions for total and monthly POPs
Understands the CAM formulas for cost and schedule indications
Mitigates risk based on the cost account indicators:
Costs
Schedule
Watch items
Risks
Issues
Mitigation
15. Summary
In closing, the ILS Manager plans and leads a complete program
initiative parallel to the overall program
They are hiring managers
They are the planners and administrators of a program
They implement processes that support the requisite reporting and
provide guidance for the team
Perpetuates new business by producing meaningful estimates and
planning for management staff
