White papers: developing a unique Department of Defense unit movement transportation tracking number: overcoming barriers to force movement visibility

Translog: Journal of Military Transportation Management, Summer, 2008 by David A. Vail

"Logistics sets the campaign's operational limits. The lead time needed to arrange logistics support and resolve logistics concerns requires continuous integration of logistic considerations into the operational planning process. This is especially critical when available planning time is short. Constant coordination and cooperation between the combatant command and component staffs--and with other combatant commands--is a prerequisite for ensuring timely command awareness and oversight of deployment, readiness, and sustainment issues in the theater of war."

--Joint Pub. 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces of the United States

Learning from Industry

The commercial distribution sector has had widespread success by adopting web-based, web-assigned tracking numbers. Their underlying motive is certainly the "bottom-line;" and to affect that "bottom-line," companies have sought to better serve their customer needs through the application of information technology. The assignment of unique life-cycle tracking numbers for customer visibility is a cornerstone strategy for corporate America. Today, nearly every successful enterprise uses some form of tracking number to manage their products and services.

Whether it is a mega-volume small package carrier such as FedEx, DHL or UPS; a large retail chain such as Wal-Mart; an international ocean carrier such as APL, SeaLand or Maersk; or even a fish and game wildlife environmentalist; every one relies upon unique life-cycle tracking numbers to hold business information together as it passes through enterprise databases. They realize that by tightly integrating corporate data, they can provide quick, simple and understandable responses to any customer inquiry. In the end, satisfied customers breed more business opportunity, and more business opportunity breeds larger "bottom-lines."

In addition to the tangible customer benefits from this data integration strategy, there are internal corporate benefits as well. The strategy also allows these organizations to track critical corporate information across domain boundaries; e.g. operations, finance, inventory/tracking, scheduling (planning), marketing and resource management. Without a business focused integration strategy to share information, the business becomes fragmented and critical business information becomes compartmentalized, and eventually loses inherent value to the business as a whole.

So, if this approach is being used so successfully by so many, why has the Department of Defense (DOD) not yet realized the value to be gained by the introduction of a unique tracking number for unit deployments? Over the past 20 years, the DOD's joint planning and execution community has continued to seek ways to compare actual execution detail with its associated planned movement. This has continually been identified as a major command and control goal--to accurately depict a "plan versus actual" view and make needed adjustments as real world events affect the plan. However, the fundamental pitfall of this goal has always been that the classified planning domain of Joint Operation Planning and Execution System (JOPES) and the unclassified execution domain of the Defense Transportation System (DTS) use significantly different data models with differing levels of detail. For that very reason, an accurate, detailed portrayal of "plan versus actual" has met with failure.

The United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) and United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM)-sponsored Transportation Tracking Number (TTN) initiative finally addresses this issue.

Early Efforts to Track Unit Movements

Subsequent to Sept. 11, 2001, high volume deployments supporting U.S. operations in Afghanistan mandated better deployment data visibility. Early analysis revealed extensive variance in the accuracy and completeness of unit deployment data and, over time, the reported operational picture of the unit deployment status was significantly distorted.

When viewing Unit Line Number (ULN) requirements in the JOPES, the corresponding scheduling and movement visibility was no better than 27 percent. When the same unit deployment data was researched in the Global Transportation Network (GTN) with the Unit Identification Code (UIC), 85 percent of the unit shipment data was visible.

Of significant interest was the magnitude of "key" data element errors across multiple systems and processes; e.g. incorrectly constructed Transportation Control Numbers (TCNs), or missing and/or incorrect ULNs. This early look into deployment data uncovered significant data breakdowns that regularly occur in the execution-planning cycle, and provided fertile areas for attacking unit move visibility problems in order to develop a long-term solution.

Overall the study revealed that systems work as designed when provided all critical data at the beginning of the process. However, it also revealed that the lack of process discipline and continuous human intervention with the data created significant voids in the ability to maintain these critical data associations. New tools, new procedures, and a greater emphasis on data quality will be needed in the future to affect a long-term solution.