Department of Defense news release (April 12, 2006): industry answers DoD's mandate for Item Unique Identification.

In April 2005, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics issued the Item Unique Identification (IUID) policy. The policy requires that all acquisitions costing over $5,000 have a unique identification number, making acquisition, repair and deployment of items faster and more efficient. General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce, and Sikorsky are among the companies that are leading the way regarding policy compliance as an opportunity to also improve their day-to-day business activities. The stories of how they met the challenge of IUID compliance offer a dynamic overview of the steps involved and benefits to be found in reaching this goal.

General Dynamics

General Dynamics (GD), a leader in mission-critical information systems and technologies, found their starting point for IUID implementation in education, arming themselves with knowledge from the Web, consultants, suppliers, and Department of Defense seminars; they also formed their own council to oversee and disseminate information.

Steve Chenard, who manages General Dynamics C4 Systems Operations Business Systems and Transformation team, observes that "once the requirements firmed up and were well understood and risk areas were identified, the initial sense of complexity faded away." With the support of their internal stakeholders, the team moved forward by conducting an initial paper pilot that mapped out the next steps for an incremental trial implementation. They started with an abstract scenario and proposal in order to easily comply with any potential changes in the requirements and then worked through contract creation and project setup. By running through the processes beforehand and building a small amount of flexibility into the plan, they provided themselves with a learning opportunity--a start to developing in-house expertise and surety that if the final DoD rulings changed they would be prepared. Only after these supporting processes were put into place did the real work begin.

General Dynamics achieved compliance with their first shipment of goods in the spring of 2005. Although a financial return on investment is still pending, General Dynamics has seen many other benefits from the implementation. They have been able to maintain their leadership position with their customers, better support our warfighters, and they anticipate new business and additional service offerings because they met compliancy requirements early on.

Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin delivered the first IUID-compliant shipment of goods in August 2004, just five months after formally beginning their compliance and optimization efforts. Lockheed had a slight advantage over other DoD contractors through use of their I-GUIDE software application, which is designed to provide the framework for a paperless factory. The time developing this software application gave Lockheed an early understanding of the scope of implementation.

Lockheed gathered a diverse group of commercial and government experts to sit on the self-directed integrated products team (IPT). In order to address the challenges, the IPT provided a one-company concept resulting in a single compliant solution that was developed by leveraging common adaptable toolsets. Through the use of these toolsets, the team streamlined implementation across the varied divisions of the company, reduced cost and efficiency, and came up with a single application to use across the board. Since compliancy was reached, the company has submitted over 4,000 error-free IUIDs to the DoD registry.

Rolls Royce 

Rolls Royce offers a competitive range of products in the global civil and defense aerospace, marine, and energy markets. Direct part marking gives Rolls-Royce its competitive edge and is directly related to the DoD's IUID policy, although it operates on an even larger scope. Direct part marking employs the same technology, standards, and data matrix identification as IUID, but it doesn't assign a unique identification number. With this technology already in place in their infrastructure, Rolls-Royce proactively pursued adoption of the IUID system, not only to comply with external standards but also to realize internal enhancements. The greatest of these improvements for Rolls-Royce would be to reduce quality failures associated with identification.

Similar to other corporations presented in this article, the two greatest obstacles for Rolls-Royce were the challenge of effectively communicating the requirement and the need to manage the process change within the organization. The manufacturers needed reliable, robust processes and results that were consistent and repeat-able. Rolls-Royce worked to define clear requirements, communicate, provide points of contact, develop implementation plans, monitor processes, and maintain the support of internal and external stakeholders until they arrived at process capability. Nat Russhard, team leader of direct part marking says, "It's easy to take the shortest route just to become compliant, but if you take the next steps and leverage it as a life cycle management technique and transform your data capture process, then it will add much more value than just compliance."

Sikorsky

Sikorsky is the prime contractor for the U.S. Army's Utility Helicopters Project Office (UHPO) and is involved in the IUID implementation on a number of fronts. The UHPO began to proactively investigate the IUID technology well ahead of the DoD mandate. The Army has used their proactive approach as a model for how implementation should be accomplished.

In order to determine how to mark each part, the UHPO had Sikorsky evaluate the surface condition, the material, and the elements to which each part is exposed. After all of these variables were taken into account, Sikorsky could make engineering recommendations on how to best mark the part. By providing an automatic and accurate method to capture and track data, IUID is a fundamental enabler of fleet management for Sikorsky. Technicians no longer have to track hours because information on the time-sensitive parts is being automatically captured. IUID is the basic building block in the program for managing Sikorsky's aircraft fleets. The ability to scan a machine-readable data matrix code when a part is installed or removed from an aircraft will eliminate the common errors we see today. There is less paperwork, it saves manhours, it enables an error-free environment, and it gives visibility to the specific parts installed on the aircraft. In addition to giving Sikorsky better insight into faulty parts, IUID will revolutionize warehousing and component tracking.

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For all these companies, education was absolutely vital. Getting all the policies and related information, going to forums and seminars, having detailed briefings that explain what IUID is about--all were crucial to implementation. The benefit realized by each company, even at such an early stage of the game, is having a better handle on their own inventory data and having a single point of reference with DoD. The long-term benefits they anticipate from IUID are increased business intelligence, lowered asset management cost, warranty tracking, shop floor control, and historical analysis of inventory data. And of course, return on investment is not far behind when all this comes into play.

Amy is a project analyst with XIO Strategies of McLean, Va.