Stock Control System Professionals collaborate and track assets

  • Published
  • By Chris Whitaker, Bronson Butler, and Phil Spradlin
  • Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Business and Enterprise Systems Directorate
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla.  – On a daily basis, the Air Logistics Complex’s take on the monumental task of maintaining thousands of aircraft.  The Stock Control System (SCS) is one of the primary Air Force logistics and financial systems enabling this massive task.

SCS supports sustainment of the U.S. Air Force aircraft fleet possible by allowing Air Force personnel to obtain, track, and have available on-hand inventory to ensure timely Air Logistics depot level repair and maintenance of the vast number of Air Force aircraft. This ultimately ensures aircraft availability in support worldwide U.S. Air Force readiness and warfighting capability.

The SCS program is one of many programs managed by the Business and Enterprise Systems (GBS) Directorate within the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC). 

The directorate is enabled by a talented group of acquisition professionals along with many functional and contractor subject matter experts, all of whom take the concept of capability delivery and customer delight very seriously.  These Capability Delivery Teams (CDTs) are driven to both sustain the logistics software systems that run the Air Force and to continually field capability enhancements, improvements, and new capabilities requested from the ALC customer.  In today’s software intensive environment, with its continuing increase in cybersecurity threats, rapid fielding of system enhancements is expected and accepted as a way of life in the management and sustainment of the SCS program. Not only has the SCS CDT fielded monthly releases for the last 20 years to keep current and meet user requirements, the CDT has also kept up with the changing technology environment, to ensure they continue to meet and exceed expectations. Proactively, the team has embraced extensive automated testing and DevSecOps as instrumental in the process. Automated testing helps ensures accurate, repeatable, and timely testing of the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that make up the SCS system, while DevSecOps practices ensure security.

SCS is comprised of many integrated modules and functionalities including a web inquiry feature that provides users the ability to query, track, and status SCS managed items.  Users can quickly acquire current asset balances by either stock number or part number as well as a status of requisitions.  

One of the major SCS functions includes logistics management of all Air Force assets warehoused and controlled by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) that are accounted for in their Depot Distribution System software application which consists of 159,000 individual items and 3.7 million units with a total value over $47 billion dollars. Many of these assets include unserviceable assets destined to be made serviceable again. Integrated modules within the SCS suite of applications manage the Due in from Overhaul  process to ensure asset visibility.

SCS is a force multiplier enabling Air Force logisticians to locate an asset and efficiently direct the asset to where it needs to be, when it needs to be there.  If an asset is unavailable, programs within SCS can be utilized to help locate the asset through use of the procurement function, depot maintenance, other services, and contract maintenance functions. In order to comply with federal financial statement requirements, SCS provides financial accounting for inventory items that are managed by the ALCs as well as provides data to other financial systems.

Supporting the warfighter and the Air Force mission has always been the focus of the AFLCMC CDT, the Functional Management Office (FMO), and the sustainment contactor teams.  As the Air Force moves forward with new initiatives and an Agile framework, the SCS program is rapidly moving towards the Agile Software development lifecycle.  

“With monthly releases and continual war room activity with our customer and support contractors, we consider ourselves “Agile-Lite,” said Chris Whitaker, SCS CDM.  “The pivot to Agile will allow for the SCS CDT to move fast and orchestrate repeatable releases at scale, providing the end user what they need, when they need it. As SCS moves into the future, the CDT stands ready to support changes required to maintain technical currency driven by a rapidly evolving technology landscape.”

The United States Air Force is well known for air power.  Behind our ability to fly, fight, and win includes not only superior engineering, but also superior maintenance enabled by superior logistics readiness order tracking and inventory management systems to ensure aircraft mission availability.  Stock Control System’s past, present, and future will ensure our maintainers have what they need, when they need it, to maintain the fleet and take the fight to our adversaries at a moment’s notice.