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RAF LITS Programme

Providing Support to the RAF LITS Programme

IBM delivered the Logistics Information Technology System (LITS) to the RAF in 1999. LITS is a long running programme designed to support the supply and engineering communities with asset and maintenance management functionality.

The Challenge

LITS provides the RAF with visibility of its assets, assisting them in fulfilling its role of providing high quality, responsive operational support, while ensuring maximum value for money.

Since initial deployment the RAF found that despite all the relevant information residing in one system they were failing to truly exploit the value of this data in meeting its operational commitment.

IBM was asked to provide an exploitation service to support the programme. This would require a team with extensive knowledge of the defence environment; specifically the RAF, and MOD logistics.

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Solution

Without the right mix of skills IBM sub-contracted the role to LSC Group. The LITS Data Exploitation and Data Services Teams (DE/DS) were established in 2001 to provide the necessary guidance on how to best utilise LITS.

The team combines both LSC Group and MOD personnel to deliver services vital to:

Acquisition, maintenance and correction of aircraft configuration data
Supporting fleet management activities on behalf of the Project Teams
Analysing trends to provide evidence of continued airworthiness, relating to lifting, fault and reliability

Customer Benefits

The DE/DS Team has improved the way in which the information contained in LITS is used to support ongoing logistics.

The activities being performed by LSC Group as part of this team are helping to:

• Improve management decisions through the availability and reliability of information.
• Improve management of airworthiness.
• Provide evidence to support achievement of TLMP and KPI targets.
• Underpin the safety case for the Engineering and Asset Management systems.
• Produce demonstrable savings of over £50M.

The Outcome

As the direction of the MOD turns ever more to Industry partnership and “Contracting for Availability”, companies such as British Aerospace, Marshall Aerospace, Rolls-Royce and Defence Munitions, see LITS as their mechanism to drive down support costs.

The team are continually asked to provide equipment reliability and maintenance planning data, such that contractors may prepare, ahead of assets arriving from RAF units, thereby reducing turn-round times.

MOD Project Teams also wish to utilise LITS data in contract monitoring, to ensure that Industry Partners meet their agreed equipment availability rates.