ECSS progress topic of Champions' Day at Hanscom

  • Published
  • By Kevin Gilmartin
  • 66th Air Base Wing
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  More than 20 Expeditionary Combat Support System champions representing all Air Force major commands gathered at Hanscom March 10-11 to review the transformational ECSS program progress and plot out the system's continued development.

Hanscom is the pilot base for the program, and will begin incrementally implementing ECSS in the 66th Logistics Squadron this July, according to Greg Laing, ECSS Change Agent coordinator.

"We came to Hanscom as a show of support for our pilot base," said Glenn Davis, Logistics Transformation Office fielding team lead, in opening the two-day conference. "This is an exciting time in the program's development and the intensity is increasing."

The ECSS program, managed by the Electronic Systems Center's Enterprise Logistics Systems Program Executive Office at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is considered the cornerstone of Air Force Logistics transformation. ECSS is an integrated data environment that combines financials, manufacturing, distribution and other business processes into a single commercial off-the-shelf, Oracle based technology solution hosted on the Air Force Global Combat Support System, and replaces more than 240 Cold War-era stand alone, or "stove-piped," systems being used today.

The current stove-piped legacy systems often result in duplicate effort, non-standardized reporting, and data integrity issues. When fully implemented, ECSS will provide standardized business processes, an enterprise view of the supply chain, and efficiencies across the Air Force.

Col. David Orr, 66th Air Base Wing commander, kicked off the "Champions' Day" event at Hanscom by welcoming participants.

"We're excited here at Hanscom and proud to be the pilot base," the colonel said. "With a cost of from $25 billion to $30 billion a year to carry out Air Force logistics using these stand alone, stove-piped systems, ECSS has the potential to save a great deal of money. With tighter resources and manpower, we've got to get this program on line."

Because of the potential savings of ECSS, which program officials call "the largest transformation in Air Force history," Chief of Staff Gen. Norman Schwartz pays close attention to the program's progress. Steve Cain, Logistics Transformation Office division chief, reported that Col.l Kenneth Moran, program executive officer for ECSS, briefed General Schwartz on ECSS March 5, and will continue to brief the chief of staff quarterly.

"We're providing these quarterly briefings to make sure we are meeting our inch-stones," Mr. Cain said.

"It was great to host this event," Mr. Laing said, "because it gave us the opportunity to meet all of the ECSS champions and hear the issues they're discussing and the hard work they're doing to field this important program."