Utah Wasatch INCOSE Presentation -- 9 Feb 17

Charts from my presentation to 

the Wasatch Chapter of

INCOSE

9 Feb 17

A Confluence of Challenges and People: Birth of the Complex System Sustainment Management Model

In my last post, here, I said:

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The Utah Chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering has invited me to be their guest speaker for February 2017. 

My blog readers get a little preview here.

I will be speaking on the following theme:

A unique confluence of historical events has led to the proliferation of complex systems that are increasingly being employed for longer and longer lifetimes. And a unique confluence of challenges and talent has led to the complex system sustainment management model.

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I then proceeded in that last blog post to lay out the words and illustrations for the first part of my presentation on historical events.

This post picks up the second part, challenges and talented people. 

As this presentation is for the Utah Chapter of the International Society of Systems Engineers (INCOSE), it would be good to mention the INCOSE definition of systems engineering, per their web site, here paraphrased for brevity:

Interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems

     - Integrates all the disciplines and specialty groups into a team effort
     - Helps form structured processes 

They go on to say that the approach is characterized by considering the entire need and the entire system, thorough documentation, and validation at every step. And they suggest that any system engineering endeavor should follow these steps:

1. State the problem
2. Investigate alternatives
3. Model the system
4. Integrate
5. Launch the system
6. Assess performance
7. Re-evaluate

Regular readers of this blog will recognize that key points of the complex systems sustainment management model mirror the ideas above.

This is no accident. 

The sustainment management model was heavily influenced by graduates of the University of Southern California Institute of Safety and Systems Management (ISSM), as mentioned and illustrated in the last post.

USC's ISSM created a program to help managers of complex systems to do a better job of management. Systems engineering was a strong influence on that program. And many members of the ICBM sustainment team were graduates of that program.

Still, along with talented people, there was a confluence of system challenges to drive excellent people to create a great sustainment management model.

The ICBM "mafia" was remarkably united. This could be due in part to the trials and tribulations of representing missiles in a pilot's air force. Logistics Command, Systems Command, and Strategic Air Command found that they scored more funds when presenting a united front to the Pentagon. Within the Air Force, civil servants tended to stay working ICBMs for decades. Outside the Air Force, but on the same team, the contractors did not change much either, especially TRW, Inc, the contractor the Air Force used to provide systems engineering and technical assistance and the original ICBM contractors associated with key systems and subsystems.

Frequently, members of contractor teams were hired from the uniformed Air Force ICBM ranks when they separate or retired. This is another factor keeping the team close-knit.

Actually, all of this led to more than just a team. It led to a tribe that was fully dedicated to the ICBM mission. Members of the tribe quickly recognized each other and were quick to talk mission, especially to newer members of the tribe like I was in 1985. 

We were a tribe in the sense of Jack Donovan's recent books, The Way of Men and Becoming a Barbarian. We were a family apart from the greater society. We missileers included various communities such as ICBM combat crews, military acquisition experts, suppliers, major defense contractors, civil servants, & etc., all linked by mission. We had a common culture and dialect and recognized leaders. We even had many processes and methods different than the airplane Air Force.

We had strict rules of morality, integrity, truth, and honesty. We expected ourselves and our fellow tribe members to set aside ego and lose ourself in the mission. To succeed, we had to win, even loot and plunder other weapon systems' funds if we could. We had to take every advantage.

Like barbarians, outsiders might actually disparage us or our mission, but we wore the head of the wolf proudly.

Within the tribe, there were instances of members who did not "tow the line". Uniformed USAF members of Strategic Air Command who did not operate at a level of perfection were corrected on the spot. SAC members with repeated issues were fired. General Curtis LeMay (who created SAC from the left-overs of WWII, aggressive acquisition, and inspired leadership of his airmen) famously said: "I have neither the time nor the inclination to differentiate between the incompetent and the merely unfortunate". This level of performance tended to influence the Systems Command and Logistics Command members as well. 

In my own experience as a TRW SETA member who was also ex-SAC, we were quickly indoctrinated into the philosophy of "your job is to make your customer successful". This did not include claiming any credit for yourself. One of the mottos we were all taught was "it is amazing what you can accomplish when you don't try to seek the credit". We were scored by our bosses on our ability to explain complex technical and programmatic issues in straightforward ways that would aid USAF decision-makers to make the best decisions. "If you can't explain it in simple terms, you don't understand it well enough yourself."

The push was to keep the team of Air Force and contractors united and asking the right questions. Never say or do anything simply because it made you feel good to "get back at" someone. Uniformed military could lose patience, civil servants might get irritated, and other contractors may find TRW folks arrogant and insufferable. Reacting to this was not productive. My personal method (others did this as well) was to ask purely technical questions and practice active listening in the hopes that this would drive the team to come up with better questions and better answers. 

There were instances of members, sometimes USAF members, not doing their jobs. As a TRW engineer it was not surprising to be asked by a uniformed officer to do their jobs. It was typical to provide customers with "draft" letters already written in USAF format on USAF letterhead that required only a signature to make it "final". Each day could be a balancing act of working with your TRW boss to help make sure your customer's boss knew what they needed to know without losing your relationship with your customer. 

In subsequent years, starting after the merger of Systems Command and Logistics Command and the dissolution of SAC in 1992, there was a push to have civil servants get more career broadening throughout their careers and also to push for more contractor competition. ICBM processes have been more and more brought under the umbrella of the USAF processes. Although still dedicated and close-knit, the days of a team so close knit that they were sometimes called incestuous, appear gone. But they leave a legacy of the weapon system sustainment management model they created. 

One of 3 missile fields across the Northern US

This occurred because this dedicated, focused, mission-oriented team had a huge problem to deal with. 

ICBMs were perfect deterrence machines. For protection, they were isolated across thousands of square miles and buried in underground highly secure vaults. They were mostly dormant, awaiting a message to launch within seconds. 

Despite the lack of data flowing from the solid rockets or liquid rocket or other dormant systems, we were charged with ensuring they were capable. That is, they must be available, reliable, accurate, hard against attack, safe, and sure. 

Any suspected degradation must be spotted with years of lead time in order to ensure fixes were in place before the mission was compromised. And any fix must work seamlessly within an incredibly complex missile, missile silo, launch command complex, logistics system, repair depots, & etc. One small change could have unforeseen consequences. The original engineering documentation could be missing. All this over a period of time where priorities and funding for ICBMs was diminishing, unique contractors were closing shop, and some parts and components were no longer available. 

We had the perfect caldron for a dedicated team of experts to rise to the most difficult of sustainment challenges. The result of this confluence was the complex system sustainment management model. 

Chapter 2: The Rise of Long-lived Complex Systems

Devout readers of this blog will quickly realize that I have posted parts of this chapter previously here. Rewrites are a fact of life and hopefully result in a more useful and cogent book. 

This one was a pretty major rewrite. The following is the introduction to Chapter 2.

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If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. 

You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.

      - Michael Crichton

Chapter 2: The Rise of Long-lived Complex Systems

You have been told, or suddenly realize, that you have an impossibly complex system that you must keep working much longer than it was designed for. And, of course, there is little funding available for you to do this. 

Your immediate reaction is very human: stress and angst. 

One way to skip the anxiety and go right to finding a solution is to understand your predicament in context. Thus, this chapter on history. 

We could go back to 1760 and attempt to trace your sense of dread to the First Industrial Revolution. This was where clever people figured out how to use machines (for instance grinding wheels and pulley systems) and new sources of energy (for instance, steam) to increase production (for instance, flour). Or we could start at 1870, the official start of the Second Industrial Revolution where we start to see very large factories. Because the first truly complex system were Cold War weapon systems, I like to start this explanation with the American Civil War (1861-1865), often thought of as the first industrialized war. 

The Civil War, besides being the most important turning point in the American Story and the source of millions of personal tragedies, also saw the modern warfighter using more complicated technologies as a means to secure victory. The steam locomotive is the obvious first example. The mental picture of moving troops and supplies by rail sometimes leaves out the complicated infrastructure of trestles, refueling points, re-watering points, numerous stations, and other subsystems that were vulnerable to clever attacks by the adversary. For example, simple devices to destroy the rails were employed and trestles were blown apart with modern explosives. In other words, the military began to apply Sun Tzu’s strategies of attacking the enemy’s center of gravity by attacking the enemy’s industrial logistics capability. We will see this taken to its logical conclusion in WWII when Allied manned bombers destroy German railyards. 

The Civil War also saw the first use of rifled bullets, rapidly repeating machine guns, iron clad ships, telegraphic communications, and other modern inventions that would prove their full utility in the Great War, WWI. My favorite, being an Air Force man, is Chief Aeronaut, “Professor” Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, and his observation balloons. 

Lowe solved many practical problems to get his balloons flying where they would be useful. A study of how he used railroad, telegraphs, portable hydrogen generators and other subsystems illustrated that new modern weapon systems carried with them the burden of complexity. Although there were challenges to overcome, many consider the failures of this new modern weapon system to be more closely tied with the military leaders’ inabilities to fully exploit it. 

All of this is introduction to the real story which takes place entirely within the 20th century, the invention of the heavier-than-air craft and its effective use in warfare. This is where the story of truly complex systems begins. 

Lost in the excitement of seeing a man fly a heavier-than-air craft in 1903 is the understanding of just what the Wright Brothers had accomplished. Prior to their historic flight, people had flown in balloons with little control of their destination, or sometimes even their fate. Virtually uncontrollable heavier-than-air flights injured and killed others. To create controllable heavier-than-air flight, the Wright Brothers basically invented aeronautical engineering. They did this with their precise calculations derived from their experiments with their own wind tunnels. 

Their solution was a network of cables to deform parts of the craft to manipulate airflow and give the pilot full command of the aircraft. 

The engineering, math, skills, and determination required for controlled flight were a signal of what was to come. Incredible machines were possible. But they would always carry with them a “logistics tail” of experts, labs, repair shops, supply depots, support hardware, and etc. 

The case might be made that tall sailing ships, for instance, employed incredible technologies that we find hard to duplicate today and should be considered complex systems. But I reject the idea that even the WWII all-metal bomber equipped with a Norden bombsight is a complex system. Real complexity was signaled in the mid-20th centrury by the invention systems engineering and its first major use in creating intercontinental and sea launched ballistic nuclear tipped ballistic missiles.  

As alluded to earlier, we must credit WWII strategic bombers with taking the fight to the enemy in a new and unique way. Determined and capable commanders like General Curtis LeMay took the Army Signal Corp Aviation Section ideas of strategic bombardment and demonstrated the ability to cripple a nation’s ability to wage war, first with Germany and then Japan. The Army’s thoughtful consideration of aerial doctrine between the world wars was critical in placing men like LeMay in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge.  

As World War II came to an end, today’s strategic manned bombers, land based intercontinental missiles, and submarine-based missiles were realized in the period of 1950 to 1970. These weapons are an indisputable definition of what a complex system is. One hint of this is the necessity to take Bell Labs’ newly invented discipline, systems engineering, and bring it to full fruition. 

In the 1980’s, when ICBMs remained in service far past their original design life, ICBM sustainment was invented and perfected. 

Fundamentals of Sustainment Book Preface

A book’s preface should establish context, confirm credibility, acknowledge inspiration, or recognize contributions of others. This preface attempts all four. I hope this preface also adds to the desire of you, worthy reader, to start studying and using this management model.

We need only look at the last 300 years since the First Industrial Revolution to establish context. Since then, the world has been exponentially creating more and more complex machines for every purpose under the sun. With the birth of systems engineering at Bell Labs, circa 1940, we have become better at ensuring these ever-increasingly complex systems do exactly what we need. With complexity comes cost. The costs of replacing these systems keeps us looking for ways to keep the old system working well past the originally-imagined lifetime. 

Thus, more and more of us find ourselves working in an organization tasked with keeping an aging complex system alive and useful.

We sustainers come from all areas: engineering, program management, logistics, supply, contracts, statisticians, mechanics, aircraft repair, and many more. We have certifications and degrees. Yet there remains no degree or certification in complex system sustainment.  

Consider this book as your first step. It is past time for a book that describes a credible sustainment management model and tells sustainers how to get the most of it.  

This book is dedicated to the men and women who, with focus and perseverance, kept our nation’s ICBM deterrent force credible for well over half a century. We owe them gratitude and respect for keeping this nation and our world from stumbling into yet another world war. Faced with a seemingly impossible task, the ICBM sustainers in the civil service, uniformed military, and contractor teams could have decided to give up in their frustration. But they were dedicated to the mission and adversity drove them to become creative.

In order to keep the world’s most complex weapon system reliable and seconds from launch for well over half a century, ICBM sustainers were literally forced to invent modern complex system sustainment. What you are about to read is a concise statement of the sustainment management model created and executed by these individuals. 

Some who read this book will not be fans of nuclear deterrence. That’s OK.

You need not be a fan of Bell Labs to benefit from Systems Engineering. And you need not be a fan of Strategic Air Command to benefit from their Complex Systems Sustainment Management Model.

To have confidence in the model describe in this book, you should have a) some understanding of the vast and seemingly endlessly interrelated weapon system it was designed to serve; b) the historic forces that led to the model; and c) the perils the model had to rise above. The next three paragraphs should make you familiar with all three.

ICBMs are scattered across many hundreds of square miles of low population real estate. Each buried silo is essential a sealed vault containing a three-stage missile and guidance system to precisely deliver a nuclear bomb to the other side of the world. The launch site is encased in tons of concrete and steel not only for security but also to protect the President’s option to launch after a first strike from an enemy. The missile silos are unmanned. Command and control comes from remote crew capsules also spread out and buried to ensure survivability. Logistics, supply, and other support is orchestrated across the nation. The design of this modern marvel is pre-modular, so any change to one piece demands a thorough understanding of it all. Any upgrades must be programmed years ahead of time since access is so limited. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, ICBMs were developed rapidly. New models emerged every few years with needed features. In the early 1970s, with the fielding of Minuteman III, the design was mature in that few new features needed to be added. The focus became keeping the existing Minutemans working. By the early 1980s, it was becoming apparent that a systematic means of assessing risk and fielded fixes early was essential to keep these complex systems working. 

The challenges that shaped the embryonic sustainment management model were a continuous string of parts obsolescence issues, emerging failure modes not dreamed of by the designers, very long lead times to completely field fixes into remote sites, and continuously lowering priority and funding levels. If a sustainment approach can solve these issues, they can solve any sustainment issue. 

Success of the complex system sustainment model can be seen today as over 400 1970’s era Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles remain reliably and credibly on alert, moments from launch. If this sustainment management model can do this for the most complex and challenging weapon system ever created, they can certainly help you sustain your system. 

The essence of any good management model is practical utility. Can the user keep the model in mind as they go about their day? Can they apply it to their daily decisions? Will it help them focus their work in the most profitable areas?

I encourage you to study the techniques and approaches in this book and determine for yourself just how useful this complex system sustainment management model is. 

Areas of Further Research

Last January, I presented my sustainment management model at AIAA's SciTech conference. September, I told the SPACE 2016 folks how it can apply to commercial space. This coming January, I am presenting "first steps" in implementing the model. 

With this as a foundation, it is probably time to suggest areas of further research using this model. 

Here are some of my ideas. Do you have any to add?

·       Do costs increase and organizational efficiencies suffer when separate organizations are optimized for, for instance, parts control of jet engines, rather than using this model to sustain the entire weapon system?

·       How many members of organizations in a particular military branch, charged with sustaining a weapon system, see themselves primarily as sustainers and secondarily as engineers, item managers, program managers, etc.? Does this identity hamper better sustainment decisions?

·       Can every weapon system in a particular military organization’s inventory be precisely defined? Is its configuration precisely identified? Is the engineering authority defined? Do these definitions correspond to to the span of control, authority, and responsibility conferred on the sustainment organization?

·       Do organizations with process change mechanisms of less than 2 weeks out-perform those who take longer?

·       How many members of the sustainment organization under study can state how the warfighter’s mission is supported by the weapon system? Can they do this in terms of precisely defined readiness factors? Can they recognize when a problem with readiness is emerging?

·       What factors go onto the design of the sustainment organization’s organizational chart? Are separate entities such as uniformed military, civil service, and contractors effectively bound into teams?

·       Do all the members of a sustainment organization feel they have a method to voice their concerns about risks to the weapon system’s mission? Are they motivated to do so?

·       To what extent is each sustainment organization in a military component compelled to use a one-size-fits-all risk management approach? What inefficiencies does this create?