Organic Industrial Base (OIB) installations like ammunition depots are crucial for sustaining Department of War (DoW) missions by repairing, rebuilding, and modifying military equipment. As a part of regular operations, OIB installations consume a significant amount of energy and other resources. Given the scale of their operations, the DoW has recognized the need to reduce the consumption of energy and other resources to increase efficiency and cut down on costs. To achieve this, DoW requires sophisticated tools that can gather, analyze, and present data about the facility’s consumption and production of energy, water, fuel, and other resources.

The Organic Industrial Base Dashboard (OIBD) solution is designed to enable OIB installations to modernize data collection, provide analysis, and accurately interpret energy and water usage alongside production performance data. The objective of the demonstration was to validate the benefits of the OIBD solution and identify applications within the DoW installation portfolio to deploy the technology. 

By visualizing key utility and production information in an easy-to-understand format with meaningful analytics, the OIBD tool was designed to help improve production efficiency and reduce operating costs.

OIBD stakeholders were given two robust deliverables at the time of deployment. The first was a static packaged workbook that consolidates all data sources and associated dependences into one file.

The second deliverable was the Docker Container solution. A baseline DoW Docker Container image from the Ironbank allowed for a controlled application and maximized updates required for future deployments. A Docker Container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies, so that the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another. A Docker Container image is a lightweight, standalone, executable package of software that includes everything needed to run an application: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries and settings. Container images become containers at runtime and in the case of Docker Containers, images become containers when they run on a Docker Engine. Available for both Linux and Windows-based applications, containerized software always runs the same, regardless of the infrastructure. Containers isolate software from its environment and ensure that it works uniformly despite differences in instance between development and staging. Docker Containers and container image software solutions have been authorized through the Defense Information Systems Agency.

The demonstration site, Red River Army Depot (RRAD) benefited from OIBD development to help end-users visualize and compare the complex options available, per viable data gathered, for planned or proposed future improvements. OIBD helped facilitate cost savings, at a glance, and give the user a thorough understanding of where high consumption exists. Examples of dashboard capabilities included: 

• Building level energy use intensity calculations and by building's facility class
• Electricity usage by building
• Geographic information system mapping of all facilities on RRAD
• Electricity usage and materials count
• Work Order Data and Consumption Data Cost Savings Correlations
• Production count by material-scheduled versus completed

In tracking these metrics, The RRAD OIBD integrated dashboard enables better cost and payback estimates, along with enabling RRAD Energy Managers to use OIBD to track and compare installed energy conservation measures (ECMs), leading to averted costs and increased savings throughout typical operations and maintenance. The cost of the OIBD tool is justified when it leads to identification of projects and improvements with favorable savings/investment ratio (SIR), simple payback (SPB), and life cycle cost. As an example, ten projects that save $54K/yr would yield SPB for OIBD = 0.92 and SIR =1.08. Software costs to maintain OIBD are minimal in comparison to the leveraged benefits that OIBD will continue to enable, targeting cost savings candidates through high consumption contributors across RRAD.

Spanning the lifecycle of this project, the project team continued to encounter challenges with implementation and lacked the approval needed to holistically deploy the planned architectural solution in its entirety. The final deliverable was a manually operated static dashboard view for metrics tracked within the facilities operations. The benefits of the dashboard when tracking and comparing ECMs, as mentioned above, lead to averted costs and increased savings throughout typical operations and maintenance. (Project Completion - 2023)