An Interview With James Eccleston

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ASC5_qa_eccelston.pdf

ASD Global

James Eccelston, president of the federal sector for ASD, talks about the U.S. government and military''s supply chain challenges, including legacy and stovepipe systems.

James Eccleston: I think that, not only within the Air Force, but within all of the Department of Defense (DoD) and its industry partners, there is a need to learn how to collaborate and optimize across the supply chain. The Air Force does an outstanding job of collecting data in everything they do, but they often don't take that data and turn it into information and share it with people that are part of the supply chain.

I think they need to realize the value they have in their legacy systems and their ability to collect data, and learn how to apply some decision-support tools on top of it to turn it into information and make collaborative, optimal decisions based on it.

In the DoD, there is a wealth of data and you need to know where it is and then use some technology through a portal or through middleware — enterprise application integration (EAI) tools — to make that information available to everyone in the supply chain that needs to know it. Then, when you make a decision, make sure you collaborate with the people you ought to. Instead of making decisions in isolation, collaborate with your vendors, or with your maintenance troops, or your supply troops, or your transportation troops. We often try to maximize one area. You may think you're making optimum decisions for transportation, but transportation is related to your distribution system and to your requirement system. All of that needs to be pulled together and it isn't yet.

ASCET: What value does historical knowledge add in optimizing the supply chain?

James Eccleston: The DoD has a smorgasbord of data, and that's their problem: They don't know which to choose from. Sometimes it's tough when you go to these big smorgasbords because there are so many good things to chew on that you often can't make a decision on which to do first. Their legacy data is very valuable. And what needs to be done is recognize the value in that and then migrating that data to a COTS product, or more modernized databases, and start mapping their legacy to their COTS and develop a migration strategy to do it.

Companies are doing that today. Accenture, as a company, understands that, and I think they're trying to do that in a number of areas. ASD is doing that with the Air Force right now — finding, in these business processes and in these businesses rules, where the data resides and going to the database that best fits the data you need for your process, then flow that across your entire supply chain.

What we found when we started looking into some of the legacy systems in the Air Force is that data that is needed to flow across an entire process is, unfortunately, contained in seven or eight different systems or databases, so it is difficult to know which one you ought to tap.

ASCET: Talking about your company now, what are ASD's value additions to supply chain solutions?

James Eccleston: I think ASD's value is this: What we bring as a true systems engineering company is that we understand data structures, we understand that, at the end of the day, it's the data, stupid.

Our guys, as a true systems engineering company, understand the value of data and how it's structured, how it's housed, and how it's used. We help the DoD understand how to extract important data out of their legacy systems, map it to COTS products, and, through integration, or middleware, or EAI tools, really build this hybrid between legacy and COTS.

We help our government customers understand appropriate technology to apply — we know that one size does not fit all. Also, as an independent systems engineering company, we're very knowledgeable about what products are on the market in the supply chain. We can do gap analyses against your current environment and where you want to go and which products best fit that. For example: for the Marine Corps, we're going to help them use our methodology to help them actually select the COT software to run their new enterprise, their GCSS, global combat support system.

ASCET: This is bringing up an issue that a lot of people are looking at right now, and that's the value of a best-of-breed solution versus a single product solution.

James Eccleston: I've done a lot of reading on this, and I've heard both sides argued very well. What our approach is, if you involve the stakeholders up front — not only the systems' people but also the users of the product — that you can often, if you use a disciplined approach, retain the value of your legacy systems and find the tools that best meet your needs, and do it smartly — use a middleware product like BEA or Tibco or WebMethods or have an integration broker or a middleware tool. Then, in a few years, if you figure there is something better or it doesn't really work the way you thought it would, you can easily plug and play without completely disrupting your entire enterprise.

We're in favor of what we call a hybrid approach — COTS with legacy and best-of-breeds COTS. But before you do that, make sure you know what your enterprise is, know what you want from the enterprise, and then bring the tools to the table that best fit your business. One thing I'm seeing, and I think you've seen it too, is when you go with the one product does all, and find it just won't cut it.

ASCET: What are the barriers to overcoming these traditional stove-pipe solutions within government?

James Eccleston: So what you have is a culture — remember, military culture is built on tradition; it's built on legacy; it's built on the pride of having a maintenance squadron and a supply squadron and a transportation squadron. The military is still built around stove pipes. Now within all the services, I can tell you they're all looking at supply chain and trying to organize more around supply chain, but when it comes down to it, it's still steeped in tradition and history of how the military is organized is around stove pipe solutions.

You've got an organization that still has its separate things. The Air Force's maintenance school is in one state, and the supply school is in another state, and the transportation school is in another state. The military schoolhouses are still stove-piped.

What do you do? To answer the question, you've got to boil it down to leadership. Leadership has got to say we're going to leverage the way we used to do things, because for the most part, the DoD has done a darn good job in global logistics. Apply the best practices out there, whether it be in government or industry, get tools in the right hands as quickly as possible, create a true collaborative environment, and get to a point where we can educate our people on value of a true collaborative and supply chain. But it takes leaders to do it.

ASCET: What other approaches or partnerships can ASD leverage to bring innovative ideas and solutions to government?

James Eccleston: We're trying to do these quick, 90- to 120-day proof of concepts that quickly show what can be done. That's one way we do it. To build an innovative supply chain for one of the services, we'd have to partner with the Accentures of the world.

We try to become the go-to company for some of the people in the government so they can turn to us and get independent analysis or an assessment of some of their potential paths ahead — so that we can do some analysis and make better decisions.

A company like ours is small so we team with the big guys; something that we've done is team with universities. We've teamed with the University of Maryland; we've teamed with Penn State; we have relationships with, I think, U.C. Berkeley and Stanford. By teaming with universities, you get some of the thought leadership and some of the advanced thinking and some of the research, and bring it to the table for your customers, too. I really think it's important for the DoD to find partners in academia as well. I'm a big proponent of the idea that every organization should have some structure, some mechanism, to enable continuous learning. If you can partner with a university or universities, I think that's very smart. And that's what I did when I was in DoD. I teamed up with the University of Maryland for advanced research in supply chain technology. And I created at Penn State the DoD Supply Chain in Resident two- week courses. n