The needs to defend the defense: Indian Armed force

In this first blog we will have short reading on Indian military supply chain. Indian armed force, with the world’s second largest front line defenders vow to protect their homeland and its inhabitants during all wars and peace. This pledge underlies abundance of strategies and sensitive functionalities, which strongly adheres to policies of Indian Government.  The commitment of the armed force just not stops with building a strong squad but also availing well engineered weaponry for battalions of the squad.

But, even these finest weapons can also fail to defend the soldiers if not reached the right place at the right time with desired quality and quantity. And this is the point of juncture where military supply chain plays a robust role in maintaining the infrastructure and the weapons at the desired level of performance.

This paramount responsibility is taken care of, by Army Ordnance Corps (AOC), India. AOC is a comprised part of a military supply chain. Here, providing resources and logistical sustainment to Indian armed force are the major tasks. Primarily, before understanding the core functionalities of AOC let us comprehend the classification of military supply chain and they are; A) Fast and light commodities chain, example: food, clothes and medicines B) Heavy and slow weapons systems chain, example: missiles, tanks, artilleries. C) Fast and large number of soldier chain. AOC commandment covers the first two categories i.e. the fast and light plus the heavy and slow commodities without including fodder and medicines.

 

Over a few decades both the India army as well as the Army Ordnance Corps has undergone huge changes with the boom of Information technology and one such notable impact was implementation of The Integrated Quarter Master Package (IQMP). IQMP is web based automation software designed by Army Development Centre by joining hands with Tata Consultancy and services.

IQMP helps in attaining the speed and accuracy in the division of military supply chain by automating every single function of the logistics. Covering altogether 13 modules this software has a compatibility check with relevant applications in the field of logistics and supply chain. With the technology augmentation, Indian armed force has set a new goal of incorporating all the processes of supply chain across various Indian armed forces under one common platform.

Future action plan of military supply chain comprises

-More mock drills of supply chain

-R&D on technology driven supply chain to bring higher rate of efficiency

-Systematic construction of depots

-More repair and maintenance at depot level

-Privatization and outsourcing

Military supply chain has and will remain as a backbone for various deliberate operations of Indian armed force especially for Indian army. Its major goal of ready to deploy the requirements at the wanted time has not only saved the battalions but also the entire country. #Happy_Learning_1