ATLAS™

The Army Transformation in Logistics And Sustainment (ATLAS™) project, now in Phase III, is developing an environment that provides a unified modeling and experimentation framework for assessing current and future combat systems maintenance concepts, maintenance manpower and capacity planning, and soldier load/effectiveness with simulation, tradeoff analysis, data-mining analytics and optimization capabilities. 

These capabilities are embodied in the project’s primary product, the Go-to-War (GTW™) simulator. The GTW™ simulator has been used by AMCOM as a Class IX (spare parts) demand forecasting engine. Forecasting Class IX demands and the availability of warfighting assets in a dynamic environment with evolving mission needs requires that planners account for the interactions among the key factors that drive demand. The GTW™ simulator uses these key factors--like optempo, asset employment policies (e.g., bank time curve-based usage), operating environment (e.g., fine sand, high altitude, severe temperature), maintenance practices and policies (e.g., time-life replacement, fixed-phase inspections, controlled substitution), accumulated age or wear, and probabilistic conditions (e.g., maintenance-induced damage, battle damage)--when forecasting demand. The simulator has shown significant payoff potential by enabling increased operational availability/readiness, a smaller logistics footprint, and considerable Class IX acquisition cost savings.

The effectiveness of the GTW™ simulator led AMCOM IMMC to select the technology as its Class IX demand forecasting tool of choice for the web-based Collaborating Online Between Resupply Activities (COBRA) system.  With GTW™, AMCOM will be able to generate more accurate spare parts needs forecasts and communicate those needs to the supplier chain with greater lead time, significantly reducing costs and dramatically improving operational readiness.

The versatile ATLAS™ technologies also have a variety of uses in various analysis and decision-making applications, including deployment planning, analyzing surge impacts on sustainable readiness, force structure needs determination, tradeoff analysis, and various what-if analyses (e.g., maintenance doctrine, operational use policy, budget impacts, operating environment changes).

KBSI's ATLAS technology is a 2010 Army Achievement Award winner. The Army evaluates nominees according to level of innovation, relevance to the mission, commercialization potential, and overall quality performance.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. ARMY RESEARCH LABORATORY under Contract No. W911QX-04-C-0020.  Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. ARMY RESEARCH LABORATORY.