Neo4j Keeps the Army Running by Tracking Equipment Maintenance
The Challenge
Equipment levels on the scale of the U.S. Army require a massive amount of maintenance and support, necessitating the procurement of millions of spare parts per year. Since maintenance, operation and support costs of equipment (depending on the program and program longevity) represent as much as 80 percent of the total lifecycle costs, it is understandable that the tracking of these costs is very important.The tracking of parts orders and the connections to the systems, components and subcomponents that they are being ordered for is a significant logistical challenge for the Army. Army leaders need the ability to rapidly query this connected data to:
- Forecast the need for replacement parts
- Calculate mean time to failure rates
- Perform multi-dimensional cost comparison and trend analysis
- Inform the Army’s budget requirements process
- Answer vital “what-if” questions such as the cost of deploying certain forces and the supporting equipment to a new war zone