Explainer
Integrated Product Support (IPS) Elements
The Short Answer
Twelve Elements, Managed as One
The DAU Integrated Product Support (IPS) Elements Guidebook describes twelve elements: the areas a program must plan, buy, and sustain so that a product stays available in service. They run from product support management and design interface to supply, maintenance, training, facilities, and technical data. The guidebook stresses the word "integrated": the Product Support Manager must understand how each element is affected by and linked with the others and employ them together.
The guidebook says it picks up where Appendix A of the DoD Product Support Manager Guidebook left off. Its foreword places the origin in 2009, when Public Law 111-84 section 805 created the Product Support Manager position, and in 2010, when the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness published a Product Support Business Model and a series of guidebooks.
The DoD List
What Each Element Covers
These are the element names as they appear in the guidebook's March 2021 edition, each with a one-line paraphrase of its scope. The guidebook itself gives the DoD-approved definitions and sub-elements.
- Product Support Management
- Plans, manages, and funds product support across all the other elements, through the Product Support Manager.
- Design Interface
- Ties design characteristics such as reliability and maintainability to the support resources the product will need.
- Sustaining Engineering
- Technical work that keeps a fielded system operating with managed risk: finding, analyzing, and resolving deficiencies.
- Supply Support
- Determining, acquiring, cataloging, storing, issuing, and replenishing spares, repair parts, and supplies.
- Maintenance Planning and Management
- Sets maintenance concepts and requirements for the life of the system: levels of repair, repair times, testability, and the support they imply.
- Packaging, Handling, Storage and Transportation (PHS&T)
- Preserving, packaging, handling, and moving equipment and support items so they are usable when needed.
- Technical Data
- Recorded scientific or technical information, including technical manuals and engineering drawings, with data rights and data delivery in scope.
- Support Equipment
- The mobile or fixed equipment needed to operate and maintain the system, from ground handling gear to test equipment.
- Training and Training Support
- Training policy, aids, devices, and simulators for the people who operate, maintain, and support the system.
- Manpower and Personnel
- Identifying and acquiring the people, military and civilian, with the skills and grades the system needs over its life.
- Facilities and Infrastructure
- The permanent and semi-permanent real property needed for training, storage, maintenance, and supply.
- Information Technology (IT) Systems Continuous Support
- Supporting the hardware, software, and documentation of mission-critical IT systems. Earlier editions called this element Computer Resources.
ILS to IPS
The Rename, and the Words That Did Not Change
Integrated logistics support (ILS) was the long-standing name for the same discipline. The move to integrated product support broadened it from logistics tasks to the whole of life-cycle support, and made the two engineering-facing elements, product support management and sustaining engineering, part of the list. The DoD guidebook foreword places the change in the 2009 to 2010 product support push rather than giving a single date.
The old name lives on in the details. The same guidebook lists a data item description titled Integrated Logistics Support Plan (DI-ILSS-80095) and still calls S1000D part of the S-Series of ILS specifications. The S-Series itself went through the same change: the 2010 AIA and ASD agreement was for a suite of ILS specifications, later renamed IPS, and SX000i was first titled a guide to the S-Series ILS specifications before its IPS title was approved in April 2019 and first used for Issue 2.0. When a requirements document says ILS, it almost always means IPS.
The ASD/AIA List
SX000i Has Its Own Twelve
SX000i, the overarching guide to the S-Series, defines twelve IPS elements of its own in Issue 4.0 and sorts them into three groups. It is the aerospace counterpart of the DoD list, written for the S-Series specifications rather than for acquisition policy. Our SX000i page explains the specification, and the S-Series map shows what each member does.
- Life cycle sustainment management
- Logistic related operations, Maintenance, Product support management, and Supply support.
- Technical management
- Computer resources, Design influence, Sustaining engineering, and Technical data.
- Infrastructure management
- Facilities and infrastructure, Workforce and personnel, Support equipment, and Training and training support.
Compared with the DoD list, SX000i has Logistic related operations (which covers packaging, handling, storage, and transport analysis) and Maintenance in place of PHS&T and Maintenance Planning and Management, Design influence in place of Design Interface, and Computer resources in place of IT Systems Continuous Support. The shape is the same; the labels differ, so a program should say which list it follows.
Where Manuals Live
The Technical Data Element
Technical manuals sit in Technical Data. The DoD guidebook calls technical manuals, including interactive electronic technical manuals, and engineering drawings "the most expensive and probably the most important data acquisitions" made in support of a system, and puts data rights and data delivery inside the element. Our guides to the technical data package, technical data rights, and technical publications cover those parts.
SX000i splits its Technical data element into two activities: develop the technical data package, and produce technical publications. Both take the LSA database as an input. That is the structural point: the manuals are not authored from a blank page, they are one output of the element, and they depend on analysis done in other elements.
The Feed
How LSA Data Reaches the Manuals
In SX000i, the information produced by the Design influence element makes up the LSA database, which is the single source for technical publications and the place all product support data is routed from. It holds configuration data, level of repair and maintenance task analysis results, and maintenance plans. SX000i says those data elements can be translated directly into S1000D data modules, which keeps manuals consistent with the analysis.
S3000L is the S-Series specification for that analysis; our S3000L page and the guide to logistics support analysis trace it from MIL-STD-1388. S1000D then governs how the manual content is structured and published, and S2000M governs the materiel management data that illustrated parts are produced from. Authoring teams get better manuals when the analysis arrives early and in a form they can trace.
FAQ
Questions We Hear
What are the 12 IPS elements?
In the DAU Integrated Product Support Elements Guidebook (March 2021): Product Support Management, Design Interface, Sustaining Engineering, Supply Support, Maintenance Planning and Management, Packaging, Handling, Storage and Transportation, Technical Data, Support Equipment, Training and Training Support, Manpower and Personnel, Facilities and Infrastructure, and Information Technology Systems Continuous Support.
What is the difference between ILS and IPS?
Integrated logistics support is the older name; integrated product support is the current one. The change widened the frame from logistics to everything that sustains a product, with product support management and sustaining engineering as explicit elements. Old names linger in practice: a DID still titled Integrated Logistics Support Plan, and the S-Series, once the ILS specifications, now the IPS specifications.
Where do technical manuals sit among the IPS elements?
In Technical Data. Both the DoD guidebook and SX000i place technical manuals and the technical data package there. Related work lands in other elements: provisioning belongs to Supply Support, and course material belongs to Training and Training Support.
Are the S-Series IPS elements the same as the DoD list?
Both have twelve, and most names match, but they are not identical. SX000i has Logistic related operations and Maintenance where DoD has PHS&T and Maintenance Planning and Management, and it keeps Computer resources and Design influence where DoD says IT Systems Continuous Support and Design Interface. Check which list your contract cites.
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Start From the Technical Data Requirement
Planning the technical data element of an IPS program? Send us the contract language and the analysis you expect to feed it, and we will tell you what the manuals will need.