With the Computerised Inventory Control Project (CICP) we have embarked upon an initiative for introduction of major changes to our methods of working. While we would retain the strengths of the existing procedures and work methods, IT would provide us with the means of enhancing efficiency and improving the quality of service we render to our customers. Once the project has extended itself to all Ordnance units, management of our holdings in an optimised manner using modern materials management techniques will really become possible. An essential factor for the success of this project is the assured availability of all the necessary data on magnetic media before porting of the system being designed for COD Delhi Cantt to all CODs, RODs and lower echelons. We must spare no effort in this regard.

Technologies that would have a direct impact on our functioning in future are mainly database management systems, server systems, networks, communication/internet and decision support systems.

Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), which are the backbone of the information management systems, are coming of age. No longer are the digits, characters and relations the only data that they can handle. DBMS of the future would, of necessity, need the capability to handle and manage data of the object type. It means the data-types would encompass varying kinds of data such as multimedia, entire pictures along with text etc. The future direction is an effort to map data held in a database to data as we see it in real life.

Parallel processing i.e. processing a problem by breaking it up into parts, simultaneously processing the parts and reassembling the results to effectively process the entire problem faster, is today available only on large and costly machines. With machines themselves gaining increased processor speeds and lower costs, this capability is likely to be available on smaller machines in future. Parallelism, object relations, rich data types, multiple database systems, data warehousing, data mining, replication, mobile databases and web-enabled databases are some of the buzz words of the next few years. With electronic commerce, not limited to only Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), business applications are quickly going to shift to electronic commerce. As the Internet becomes established into a suitable communication infrastructure, DBMS will have to support electronic commerce in the form of banking, electronic showrooms, trade centres etc on the web. The databases of the future, in order to meet the forthcoming challenges, will need a quantum jump in technology and architecture. Efforts in this direction are already underway.

Internet or the world-wide web is the largest network in the world. The most important aspect of this network is that it is not owned by any single organisation. It provides an enormous source of data on every conceivable subject at negligible cost. The homogeneity, complexity, diversity and sheer size of the Internet is awesome. Owing to its global presence and options that it provides, the potential of the Internet has been accepted and acknowledged as unparallel. As things are today, an analysis of the requirements in the coming ten to fifteen years reveals a tenfold enhancement required in the world-wide web which actually means adding an equal sized web every year, for ten years. Unbelievable, as it may appear, there is apparently no other option if the desired functionality and power is to be added to the Internet to meet the future challenges. With electronic commerce and business computing heavily and aggressively depending on the web in times to come, security and integrity of the web will have to be augmented through security fire walls, site certificates, cryptography etc. In our context, the Internet would provide us technologies that ensure availability of vastly improved communications and availability of information wherever required, instant.

Most mainframe computers are today found to be too costly to maintain due to similar capabilities being available on much smaller machines. Down-sizing of machines, therefore, is being done worldwide by large organisations. The preference is for a number of smaller and inexpensive systems to do the same job that the mainframes were doing centrally. Due to numerous software compatibility and other maintain-ability problems faced worldwide, the paradigm has shifted from ‘down-sizing’ to ‘right sizing’. This implies replacing mainframes with intermediate level platforms with higher processing power, faster speed and comparatively a much lower cost but without introducing too many machines.

Technology updates, new hardware, new software, new devices, new device drivers, higher features, higher speed, higher performance - there seems to be no end to the desktop environment computational power. Today, an application running on the system appears promising more features and a better interface. The new application when put on the existing systems fails to deliver. The work station or desktop hardware in the next few years will become faster. It is also unlikely that there will be any new machine in the market which is not Internet and multimedia-ready. In the ultimate analysis, the day is not very far when the desktop on our tables would have similar computational capabilities as those handling the entire railway reservation system today.

The technologies mentioned in preceding paragraphs are tools that we need to harness to enhance our efficiency. The functioning of our depots is manual in nature, and our operating procedures are decades-old. These are time-tested but are redundant in today’s context. RDBMS such as ORACLE, DB2 etc along with 4th Generation Language (4GL) application development tools, permit application development with greatly reduced effort. Our CICP initiative is a right step in this direction. With the inclusion of parallel processing in our hardware and software systems, we will be able to achieve our objective of provision of accurate and timely data to managers at every level.

International standards for data interchange protocols such as TCP/IP are already in place. We need to adopt such standard protocols so that every server in our system has access to every other server (considering access rights and security considerations). This would enable querying across the entire WAN (wide area network) that will be installed. These technologies would also provide interconnectivity with databases created by our vendors and other sources of supply along with facilities for instantaneous updating of status with regard to any supply orders, offers pricing details, vendor rating data, capacity planning details etc. Another appropriate feature of these technologies is the e-mail feature.

Decision Support System (DSS) technologies are already available and are also undergoing constant research and development measures which provide facilities like on line (OLAP) Analytical Processing. Data mining and data warehousing would make analysis of every large volumes of data (millions of bytes of data across the entire WAN) a systematic and easy process. As our computerised system gets ready and grows, huge amounts of data would be generated and be available on magnetic media. This data, by itself, represents little or negligible usefulness unless analysed using numerous parameters applied together. For example, details of wastages of a group of items like ECC clothing, analysed by cost, seasonal patterns and source of supply all together could make our planning efficient. This very data also analysed keeping transportation model consideration in mind would generate various options for the manager to choose from. The capabilities of such technologies are boundless. Bar coding system has great potential in the sphere of warehousing and depot functions in the areas of accurate identification, despatch, monitoring of stores in transit and other areas. We are incorporating this as an add-on to CICP.

The Army Ordnance Corps (AOC) is the prime logistic management agency for the Army. Our quest for enhanced customer satisfaction can only materialise if we perform our role with utmost efficiency. An essential requirement is that each one of us is a thorough professional and understands the requirements of the job as well as available technologies fully. Only then will we be in a position to use these technologies to achieve our aim and keep the Ordnance flag flying high.

Lt Gen SK Bhatnagar