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While electronic warfare requires the Defense Department’s military units to be able to minimize their digital footprint, shutting down communications doesn’t eliminate the need to manage supplies, maintain equipment and keep operations running.
“They need some type of capability that gives them the enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems that they’ve been used to in a forward operating location where they are subject to the electronic warfare requirements we see on the modern battlefield,” said Dan Miller, director of defense solutions for SAP Public Services.
One of the biggest concerns in military logistics is operating in nonpermissive environments, Miller said during Federal News Network’s DoD Modernization Exchange.
Disconnected solutions for supply chain management
In a permissive environment, the primary concern is efficiency and how quickly and cost-effectively supplies can be moved. But in a contested environment — where adversaries are able to disrupt logistics — the old days of having massive amounts of supplies stored prior to a combat are long gone, he said.
“From a contested logistics environment, what I would like to know at the staff headquarters is to understand, what is the actual logistics situation of the units that are in the field?” Miller said. “What is their operational pace? And if they can’t communicate to me, how can I infer what they would need based on their known operational pace? What is their ammunition consumption, fuel, food consumption and other materials that might be required to sustain combat operations or combat support operations?”
That disconnected supply chain gives military units on the front lines the ability to do what they need to do and identify what they need from inventory and supply management, and from a maintenance management perspective, he explained. They can “then communicate that back to headquarters in real time or near-real time, and then we can make those decisions to only put in motion the supplies and logistics that are necessary to continue combat operations,” Miller added.
The biggest challenge in ensuring units have the fuel or food they need — no more, no less — is data synchronization and making sure both headquarters and forward-deployed units are on the same page about supply levels, maintenance needs and operational status. Without proper synchronization, database reconciliation issues can easily lead to disrupted logistics, he said.
A common supply chain picture from front line to HQ
“What SAP has done with that is very fundamentally deployed the exact same solution at a central server at higher headquarters and on remote servers at the forward units,” Miller said. “Whether those forward units are ashore at a forward operating base or a mobile brigade, or at sea on a ship, whether that ship is a submarine, a small deck or a large deck, it’s the same system. Users go back and forth between them. What we’ve done though is we’ve lightened up the system at sea by assigning ownership of the data elements that are required for that particular unit.”
Additionally, a common user interface is essential, as personnel often rotate between headquarters and frontline units.
“If I need the flexibility to re-staff or move more people forward, I can’t have them out there learning a new system and a new user interface and a new way of doing business,” he said. “I want them to have the same common user interface, the same common understanding of the information, so we can start to make decisions from a point of fact a lot quicker because we’re both looking at the same screen. We’re looking at the data the same way, and then we can start to make decisions the same way about it.”
When it comes to disconnected ERP implementation, it is imperative that users are trained to input data immediately and accurately, Miller said. Otherwise, manual workarounds can quickly cause logistical chaos.
“It seems obvious, but I’ve done projects where we actually had to go out and paint a blue line, write SAP on it and tell the operators in the warehouse, ‘Do not move these materials across the line until you’ve put them inside the SAP system and receive them properly. And if there’s an error, fix it instead of moving on with your day.’ Because once they do that, they have forgotten about it, and they have started to process the thing, and then the entire material resource planning system falls apart,” he said.
Beyond user training, establishing a reliable wireless network is another critical factor for successful ERP implementation.
“Make sure that you’ve established a local network that can support RF, have that capability in the forward operating base inside the ships where the system is operating, so that you’re not required to print out a piece of paper, walk five decks down and checklist it off, because that makes it harder to get it back into the system of record.”
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The post DoD Modernization Exchange 2025: SAP’s Dan Miller on how DoD can advance battlefield logistics in contested environments first appeared on Federal News Network.