Integrated Logistic Support (ILS) is a comprehensive approach utilized by organizations to ensure the efficient and effective support of complex systems throughout their lifecycle. It involves planning, coordinating, and implementing various activities to achieve reliability, maintainability, availability, and supportability objectives.
At its core, ILS seeks to integrate the logistics aspects throughout the entire life span of a system, from design and development to eventual disposal. This encompasses multiple domains, including engineering, supply chain management, maintenance, training, and technical documentation.
ILS activities begin during the design phase, where support requirements are identified and integrated into the overall system design. This includes the consideration of factors such as ease of maintenance, reliability, and logistics footprint. Once the system is in operation, ILS continues to address key areas like spare parts provisioning, maintenance planning, and training requirements for operators and maintainers.
The main goal of ILS is to ensure that the system remains operational and reliable, while minimizing downtime and optimizing support costs. By taking a holistic and proactive approach to logistics, ILS helps organizations optimize their resources and increase operational efficiency.
Key elements of ILS include supportability analysis, logistics support analysis, provisioning, logistics engineering, maintenance planning, technical documentation, training and support equipment, and facilities planning. These elements are coordinated and integrated to achieve the overall objective of providing seamless support for complex systems throughout their lifecycle.
