Description:
PM Soldier Medical Devices acts as the primary materiel developer for Army medical capabilities. PM SMD supports 400 LINs with a catalog of over 17,000 NSNs and is constantly creating and modifying SKOs to support its mission. PM SMD is required to maintain multiple SKO versions ranging from production, development and historical fielded SKOs which all share the same NSN. Average SKO quantity totals 150 components with some assemblages reaching over 1,200 lines. Many kits share common components. As capabilities are changed, PM SMD will replace components across all kits in the enterprise. Currently ELMS SKO process will not allow variations of different SKO assemblies sharing the same NSN, users to compare to SKOs to view component differences, NSNs to be searched and return results for each SKO the component is associated with, and mass update allowing the user to swap component NSNs within multiple SKOs at the same time.
PM SMD Product Managers will identify Army requirement changes which result in mass SKO updates across the enterprise. When modernizing and updating common medical components across the board, catalogers will have to dive into each SKO one by one to inquire if a component is associated with it. This will drastically increase research efforts and time to update medical assemblages across the board. This will also cause opportunities for misses. Catalogers will have to work around this by extracting each SKO into excel and manually comparing. Without these changes PM SMD will realize a significant increase of man hours required to swap single component lines in over 100 SKOs. Manual swapping can increase opportunities for error and decrease cataloging accuracy across PM SMDs enterprise.
Recommended:
Modify ELMS SKO process to (1) display MUAG, TIC Code as component grid column. (2) Allow for multiple variations of the same SKO NSN, versions may represent test, production and historical variants. (3) Show historical changes and allow for reversion to a previous configuration. (4) Allow an NSN to be searched returning all SKOs the NSN is associated to. (5) Allow for comparisons between SKOs to view component differences, as well as historical changes to a SKO. (6) Allow Mass SKO Changes. The user should be able to select multiple SKO/Versions and specify a component NSN within all kits and a new NSN for it to be replaced by. Replacement should impact all selected SKOs.
For example, PM SMD may support 100 SKOs that contain a caliper device. Product managers may identify the current generation caliper to not meet the Army capability requirement. PMs will then direct the cataloging team to update all of PM SMDs SKOs. Updated SKOs will use the new caliper device which will have a new NSN. All 100 SKOs will need to be updated to replace the old generation caliper NSN with the new generation NSN. Quantity conversion may need to be taken into consideration (swapping QTY 2 for new requirement of QTY 1).
Mission Critical:
Proposed modifications will deliver the capability to manage several versions of a SKO for the purpose of material development, as well as reducing manual excel manipulation required to compare multiple SKOs. Development activities require production, test, development and historical variants of the same federally cataloged NSN. Without these versions PM SMD will not be able to accurately and efficiently facilitate medical material development within ELMS. This change aims to enhance unit efficiency, benefiting the individual Soldier by ensuring they can train and fight with confidence, knowing their equipment sets are current, reliable, and tailored to their mission requirements
Benefits:
This solution will deliver a significant reduction in man hours driving cost savings and enhanced accuracy by providing a systematic process for set comparisons and version management. Without this solution, catalogers will have to use excel to manage many different variants of a kit’s NSN. As each SKO may have 3 or more variants, tying together manual kit variations offline will triple the management required to keep kits consistent and accurate throughout the enterprise. Cost savings and enhanced accuracy of providing a systematic solution reduces administrative delays, improves accountability and ultimately increases operational readiness. Accurate assemblage cataloging facilitates unit efficiency ensuring Soldiers can train and fight with confidence, knowing their equipment sets are current, reliable and tailored to mission requirements.
Frequency:
Daily
Users:
This solution would benefit all 100 PM SMD users operating on ELMS.