Navigating the Complexities of Government Sustainment: Challenges and Solutions

In the world of government sustainment, balancing asset performance and cost is a persistent challenge. Sustainment leaders face the daunting task of ensuring operational effectiveness while managing scarce resources. This balancing act requires a deep understanding of how near-term resource allocation decisions impact long-term operational capabilities. The complexity of modern sustainment environments, which include funding, personnel, maintenance, supply chains, infrastructure, and support equipment, adds another layer of difficulty. Organizations with large, mixed fleets of equipment, where the complexity, size, and fragmentation of processes, equipment, supply chains, logistics, and personnel make assessing the impact of resourcing decisions difficult, must address unique challenges like the following:

• Unclear connections between investment and equipment performance and operational impact
• Decision support tools that do not account for the enterprise complexities of federal government sustainment environments (i.e., only account for one or two causal factors that drive equipment performance)
• Tools that cannot model sufficiently complex sustainment scenarios to be representative of real-world challenges.

To address these challenges, the federal government urgently needs deeper understanding of the relationship between sustainment resourcing/funding and performance outcomes and improved communication and collaboration among many stakeholders.

Key Functions for Overcoming Sustainment Challenges

1. Integrated Data Management: 

   The primary challenge is integrating the wide array of federal sustainment data inputs. Equipment, supply chains, personnel, training, infrastructure, and financials all play crucial roles in maintaining operational readiness. Effective sustainment relies on the ability to capture and analyze this data to make informed decisions. Without a unified view of these elements, it becomes nearly impossible to optimize resource allocation.

2. Advanced Modeling and Simulation: 

   Advanced modeling and simulation tools are essential for predicting the impact of resource allocation decisions. These tools allow sustainment professionals to run complex scenarios and understand the potential outcomes of different strategies. By leveraging advanced modeling, government entities can better align their desired outcomes with the optimal allocation of resources.

3. Strategic Resource Planning: 

   Strategic resource planning is vital for achieving target readiness levels across various programs. This involves not only understanding the feasibility of these targets but also identifying the minimum resources required to meet specific performance levels. Effective planning ensures that resources are used efficiently and that asset performance is maintained.

4. Operational Availability Forecasting: 

   Forecasting the operational availability of equipment is crucial for mission-critical decision-making. Given a certain distribution of personnel, supply, assets, and operational tempo, it is essential to anticipate the equipment's availability. This forecasting capability helps inform decisions to balance performance with cost.

5. Continuous Improvement: 

   Sustainment decision makers face numerous opportunities to boost operational effectiveness each day. Using decision support tools, they can better understand which opportunities to pursue based on performance returns, ensuring effective resource allocation and organizational agility. This approach helps government entities stay ahead of challenges and adapt to changing circumstances, driving long-term success and operational readiness.

The Role of Advanced Tools in Sustainment

Advanced tools and technologies are playing an increasingly pivotal role in overcoming obstacles experienced by sustainment professionals. These innovative solutions provide a digital representation of the sustainment environment, capturing its intricacies and enabling sophisticated simulations. At LMI, we take a holistic approach to digital transformation, applying principles of human-centered design to government solutions to reduce employee cognitive load and enhance decision effectiveness and efficiency.  

LMI has a rich history of applying advanced modeling and simulation to address the challenges faced by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), and the Department of Defense (DoD). Advances in Generative AI further augment sustainment solutions by creating robust text and document-based workflows. Sustainment professionals can leverage these tools to make more informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and enhance operational readiness.

Introducing LMI Forge's CORE

At LMI Forge, we understand the complexities of government sustainment. Our Cost of Readiness Engine (CORE) is designed to simplify the execution and evaluation of dynamic sustainment simulations and their associated costs. CORE is an enterprise level decision support tool that integrates a collection of models into a single framework, providing clear connections between investments and performance/impact across programs.

CORE helps government entities balance performance and cost by capturing the complexities of modern sustainment environments and running complex sustainment scenarios. It bridges the gap between resourcing, performance, and operational impact tradeoffs, empowering users to make mission-critical decisions at the pace of need. For more information on how LMI Forge's CORE can help you navigate the challenges of government sustainment, visit Logistics Sustainment.