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Sep 23 2020

NSPA automates materiel and supply chain management for BOXER vehicles

Luxembourg, 23 September 2020 - The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) has recently signed a supply outline agreement with Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann (KMW) to enable Material and Supply Chain Management Automation in the Land Systems domain. Since 2001, NSPA has been developing and providing an automation capability in the air system domain. This is the first time that automation is available for Land Systems. 

This new capability elevates supply chain management for the BOXER vehicles to a higher level of efficiency based on an automated material management process for several thousand selected items. This enables NSPA to support the Boxer's user nations (Germany, Lithuania, The Netherlands) and at a later stage the United Kingdom in a well-defined, direct and automated process flow between the users and the vendor.

"This is an important milestone for leveraging material and supply chain automation into the Land Systems domain, in line with our Life Cycle Management prioritized development lines. NSPA has been providing this capability for many years in the Air Systems domain to the benefit of our customer nations and their armed forces. Now, this milestone will enable higher levels of effectiveness and efficiency also in the land system domain", explains Mr Rudolf Maus, NSPA Life Cycle Management Director.

Since 2001, NSPA has successfully provided standardized process automation and end-to-end integration for the NH90 and TIGER helicopters. This automation service was expanded in the past to include other weapon systems such as the A400M aircraft and the Alliance Ground Surveillance system (AGS).The end-to-end automated electronic data processing is based on the ASD/AIA (AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe / Aerospace Industries Association of America) S2000M specification. It covers materiel management including processing of supply chain disciplines for weapon system parts catalogues, pricing lists and the related ordering of spare parts as well as repair services including full order life-cycle with deliveries, transportation, invoicing and payments management.

NSPA acts in a very effective and efficient manner as an agent between all involved partners, offering a fully tailored automated solution to all its customers and industry stakeholders. This way, NSPA team integrates, facilitates and maintains the automated activities between Nations and Industries enabling partners to implement and operate into a single procurement channel.

As of today, NSPA executes – in fully automated mode - a business volume of hundreds of millions euro per year, processing tens of thousands of supply and service orders and their related invoices.

Photo: Crown Copyright