Managerial control of the Army's integrated sustainment maintenance system from a national perspective

Abstract

As the Department of Defense continues to face force and budget reductions, the Army must rise to the occasion and explore opportunities that will improve its level of wartime readiness within resource constraints. Senior Army leadership realized that one area needing substantial changes was the Army's maintenance procedures. This thesis examines the Army's Integrated Sustainment Maintenance (ISM) program. As with any program, there is a certain amount of managerial control necessary to implement and execute the program. The primary focus of this thesis is to identify what agencies, within the Army, are capable of providing the centralized management of ISM at the national level and what functions/responsibilities the National Sustainment Maintenance Manager (NSMM) should perform. ISM allows centralized management and decentralized execution of the Army's sustainment maintenance requirements through the consolidation of all sustainment maintenance activities under an integrated management structure. The goal of the concept is to maximize repair capabilities while providing high levels of operational availability for assigned weapon systems at a reduced cost. By balancing resource allocations, workload distributions, and decentralizing the execution of sustainment maintenance, ISM seeks to maximize repair capabilities and optimize the use of available resources.