Subscribe to the Free Print Edition!
Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 10/11/04 issue

Marine Corps uses Web to track who’s ready, who’s not

By Patience Wait , GCN Staff

When Marine Corps commanders prepare to send troops into a potentially volatile situation in Iraq, a key factor in deciding which units to deploy is the readiness of their equipment.

With a new Web tool, commanders now not only can identify units that are combat-ready, they can also see which are close to readiness, along with what those units need, where the parts or supplies are located, and how long it will take for them to arrive.

The Marine Corps Equipment Readiness Information Tool, or MERIT, is a decision support tool that integrates data from stovepiped logistics systems. It provides a graphical depiction of units’ readiness, and detailed supply and maintenance information. It creates views by commodity, functional area and organization. Just as important, MERIT gives all users, from privates to generals, a common frame of reference.

Unlike many military initiatives, MERIT was not the product of a specific IT plan, said Maj. Keith Moore, leader of the MERIT team.

There already were some prototype Internet-based logistics projects scattered throughout the Corps, developed by individual groups to meet their own needs. “Marines are pretty intuitive and aggressive, creating their own solutions to make their lives easier,” Moore said.

In 2002, Marine leaders issued directives to encourage the use of common data. They also instructed units developing their own systems to find others trying to solve the same problem, in order to come up with a single, unified system.

Once Marine systems officials got together to implement a plan for MERIT, Moore said, service brass gave them 90 days to develop some initial capabilities that would let command staff evaluate the program.

When the developers received approval to move the project forward, they used commercial software to get it up and running on the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet less than six months later.

The price tag for implementing MERIT was small for an enterprisewide program, about $4 million, Moore said. The Defense Logistics Agency contributed about half the amount.

MERIT uses an open architecture to allow additional capabilities and can operate on a variety of IT platforms. It uses Extensible Markup Language and an Oracle9i database with Oracle9i Advanced Security Option encryption.

One business application that influenced the team was SmartMoney.com, which uses Honeycomb 2.0 software from the Hive Group Inc. of San Mateo, Calif., to display real-time stock information.

More news on related topics: Business Process Management, Defense IT, Executive Center, IT in Action, Management, Web Strategies, COOP / Telework