Comparative Functional Analysis of Air Force and Commercially Available Transportation Information Management Systems

The Air Force currently relies on two transportation information management systems for managing cargo and passenger movements throughout the Defense Transportation System. The two systems are Global Air Transportation Execution System (GATES) and Cargo Movement Operations System (CMOS). Although GATES and CMOS have evolved from legacy systems created during the 1980s, both systems are used to process cargo and passengers while providing the information needed to maintain in-transit visibility (ITV) and manage each movement. The purpose of this research is to identify commercially available logistics software packages and determine whether they provide the same functionality as the two Air Force information systems currently employed. Using a case study methodology, the researcher collected information on logistics software provided by SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft. A gap analysis was then conducted to identify the percentage of similarity between the Air Force and commercial systems. The results of the research show SAP having the highest percentage of similarity with each of the Air Force systems followed by Oracle and then PeopleSoft