NATO Continuous Acquisition & Life-Cycle Support (CALS)
The paper commence with a brief background and definition for CALS followed by an introduction. Addressed next is a glance at the Multi-National Program perspective, view of the government, industrialists and business for CALS.
What is NATO CALS, its mission, basic components and polices are briefed in the next section. At the same time, how its goes digital is also highlighted briefly in the paper. From the Defense System (DS) perspective, to close overview of the Staged Process for Through Life Information Management (TLIM) and Life Information Management (LIM), gives a clear vision of how NATO Continuous Acquisition & Life-Cycle Support (CALS) should go about.
Background & Definition
Proposed in 1985, the United States Department of Defense introduced the Continuous Acquisition and Life-cycle Support (CALS) in order to increase the digital product information use and; obtain and support defense systems.
Thus, CALS can be described as a combined government / industry policy that focuses on reengineering existing business development into extremely mechanized and integrated defense system life-cycle management process. However, life cycle, in this framework includes the perception, pattern / development, construction, retaining and organizing of a defense system (DS).
Introduction
The main objective of CALS is to decrease defense system time to market, while, at the same time, cut down its total ownership cost, resulting in the improved quality, across the life cycle. To handle the DS technical information based on international standards, the information Technology (IT) is used as an enabler to support the implementation and utilization of a shared data environment. However, the CALS philosophy includes the implementation of a rational style in order to manage the manufacturing, entry, supervision, maintenance, delivery and recycling of digital technical information.
In order to accomplish very targeted government-industry business objectives, the CALS policy incorporates multi-disciplinary...
Thus, the Continuous Acquisition side of CALS signifies optimizing customer-contractor processes during the perception, pattern/develop and construct stages.
The Multi-National Program Perspective
Operated in a setting of extra-ordinary involvedness, the Multi-national defense system programs can be illustrated in figure 1:
Figure 1: Multi- National Defence System Program
Different Perspectives
On the government side of a defense system, individual national offices, within contributing countries support typically an international project office. This office looks after the relationship with industry.
This program is supported by one or more prime contractors of the industrial side, formed by parent companies, from usually several countries. These prime contractors communicate with a complete chain of sub-contractors well as suppliers, who mostly supply more or less the same equipment to other Armed Forces and to commercial customers.
While, on the business side, many of these business processes essentially obtain and support the defense system that requires the distribution / exchange of data across this wide supply chain. However, the operational unit may require the data formed by a supplier in the project lifecycle after many years at different locations.
NATO CALS
The Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD) in 1989 took over all NATO CALS issues by setting up a CALS working group under Allied Committee 301 (Standardization of Material and Engineering Practices) subgroup D. The CNAD in 1993 authorized the creation of the NATO CALS Organization, which was made responsible for the direction of al CALS activities being operated within NATO. Thus, the main objective of NATO CALS is to make better speed, increase quality, decrease time to market,…
