Beneficiary Discovery —

GySgt Seth

• Many motor pools do not have a GCSS clerk.  The Corporals (mechanics) usually need to enter orders themselves.  This is a frequent bottleneck and painful due to lack of training.
• When he was Chief, he would have his staff report two hours early to run the days reports.
• Value of a solution that ensured reports were ready each day, “That would save hours if not days of time in any given week.
• Value of a solution for capturing diagnostics and reducing GCSS entry, “That would be absolutely amazing!”

SSgt Theodore

• Part orders are entered and reports run in the Motor Pool by the GCSS clerk. The clerk is a specialist position expert is GCSS.
• Corporals (mechanics) cannot be trusted to manipulate GCSS due to lack of training.
• Getting maintenance reports out of GCSS is frequently a bottleneck.

Cpl Brett

• When making requests, they need to request approval from Quality Control (Sgt.)
• He currently has to fill out forms by hand and look up appropriate parts separately
• Says using a Toughbook to input data would be great but

Cpl Devin

• Fills out MOL data.
• MOL is the system for keeping track of each Marines personal data
• MCTIMs and MOL contain duplicate data

SSgt Potter

• Getting maintenance reports out of GCSS is never a problem because you can schedule GCSS to run them at a pre-set time and drop them in a folder your specify.
•  

  Each Motor Pool is run largely according to the methodology set by the Chief there is not a standard operating procedure.

•  

  The nature of the staffing – GCSS clerk or no – and procedures varies greatly across different units.

Capt Bender

• Marine Online is the online training delivery system.  Smoking cessation, sexual harassment, specialty-related courses
•  

  Courses are assigned based on specialty and rank.  Some are required, some are done voluntarily as they count towards

• Marine Net is effectively the personnel jacket for each marine.  Includes personal info; past awards/demerits, fitness results, etc.
• MCTIMS aggregates training from Marine Online as well a roster from in-person classes.

Mr. Nevis

• Experience in both Marines and Air Force
• Air Force uses GCSS also, reports readiness on aircraft
• Could potentially benefit from this as well

Cpl Steven

• Tracks personnel readiness through MCTIMs
• Generates Alpha Reports (Excel Sheet) for readiness
• Presents Alpha Reports to Company Commander)

Cpl Jacob

• Tracks equipment through GCSS, all information necessary is there
• Tracks training through Marine Net, assigning training to those who need it
• Has no real problems with GCSS

MSgt Lemus

• Solution to GCSS reporting is already automated, people just must not know or it must not work
• Each company has its own method of tracking readiness (Spreadsheets)
• When asked if a Web App connecting directly to GCSS and MCTIMs that has readiness reports and drillable data would be helpful, he loved it

Capt Bender

• Introduced us to the idea of fixing readiness reporting at the Motor Pool level
• Said being able to improve the flow of communicating maintenance needs and potentially automating GCSS input would improve readiness
• Wants us to get into a Motor Pool to really see the flow of maintenance request processing

Capt Davis

• Head of Future Ops (>90 days out)
•  

  Units do not report “readiness” to him. They report they are “ready to support”.  (Could not elaborate on when “readiness” is used as opposed to “ready to support”

•  

  Does not deal with DRRS and was not prepared to speak to how equipment readiness layers onto personnel readiness.  His officemate can help us there.

Key Insights —

1. Readiness reporting is extremely decentralized, which is fine at lower levels, but when high command wants to assign resources he has trouble figuring it out.
2. Attacking reporting issue will be challenging as it requires Marine wide acceptance and involves many factors.
3. Motor Pool uses paper for reporting issues, certainly potential for improvement.
4. Maintenance reporting and part replacement is an important and time-consuming process, automating even part could be very valuable to Motor Pool command, Corporals reporting maintenance, and people inputting GCSS order requests

Key Decisions —

1. We are moving away from the reporting and toward streamlining Motor Pool flow

Beneficiaries:

1. MGySgt Amber Hecht (amber.hecht@usmc.mil)
   • High Level Maintenance
   • Provided context on issue in general
   • Discussed the speed and flexibility of GCSS
2. SSgt Cynthia Crady (cynthia.crady@usmc.mil)
   • Maintenance Side
   • Closer to operations, diagnosing issues with equipment
   • Slow/unreliable data was her largest blocker
3. Capt Conor Bender (conor.bender@usmc.mil)
   • Problem Sponsor
   • Raised issues with maintenance inputting issues
   • Intro to the workflow of the system
4. MSgt Carlos Lemus (carlos.lemus@usmc.mil)
   • Problem Sponsor
   • Insight into the use cases of GCSS
   • Introduced problem of stale data
5. GySgt Seth Forbes (seth.forbes@usmc.mil)
   • Maintenance
   • Runs into issues with drilling into data
   • Introduced us to OTS
6. 1stLt Monica Mendoza  (monica.mendoza@usmc.mil)
   • Supply side
   • Runs into issues generating reports
   • Uses GCSS as a tool for determining purchases
7. CWO3 Ryan Stewart (ryan.d.stewart@usmc.mil)
   • Supply side
   • Also addressed issues with drilling down
   • Connection issues/Speed
8. Maj Christopher Dettle (christopher.dettle@usmc.mil)
   • Supply side
   • High Level view of issue
   • Good insight into why this is an important issue
   • Not great for details

Insights:

• From our preliminary discussions, it seems there are a variety of issues involved in the supply chain of material readiness. Our initial hypothesis was proved correct with a major caveat. These readiness reports are accessible to the CG, however the effectiveness and reliability of  these reports varies widely due to unreliable access to the main system, stale data and complex data management.  The reporting of material readiness is both deep and broad, involving many levels as well as many components at each level. Our initial insight is that there could be a better way to connect those reporting errors at the operation and maintenance level to the Command General who is allocating resources to improve readiness.

Decisions:

• We need to expand our interviews to people with more technical insight on GCSS to get a better understanding of the functionality and data types being passed in.
• Our initial MVP is based the idea that the structure of GCSS doesn’t fully fill the need of a large volume of users and quick access to request and update data.