absence to undertake an ILS Sabbatical; furthering their knowledge of the logistics engineering disciplines. ILS Sabbaticals are normally taken in developing nations - allowing the practitioner an insight into sustainment practices in an environment of limited materiel resources. Adoption ILS is a technique introduced by the US Army to ensure that the supportability of an equipment item is considered during its design and development. The technique was adopted by the UK MoD in 1993 and made compulsory for the procurement of the majority of MOD equipment. Influence on Design. Integrated Logistic Support will provide important means to identify (as early as possible) reliability issues / problems and can initiate system or part design improvements based on reliability, maintainability, testability or system availability analysis Design of the Support Solution for minimum cost. Ensuring that the Support Solution considers and integrates the elements considered by ILS. This is discussed fully below. Initial Support Package. These tasks include calculation of requirements for spare parts, special tools, and documentation. Quantities required for a specified initial period are calculated, procured, and delivered to support delivery, installation in some of the cases, and operation of the equipment. The ILS management process facilitates specification, design, development, acquisition, test, fielding, and support of systems. Maintenance planning Maintenance planning begins early in the acquisition process with development of the maintenance concept. It is conducted to evolve and establish requirements and tasks to be accomplished for achieving, restoring, and maintaining the operational capability for the life of the system. Maintenance planning also involves Level Of Repair Analysis (LORA) as a function of the system acquisition process. Maintenance planning will: Define the actions and support necessary to ensure that the system attains the specified system readiness objectives with minimum Life Cycle Cost (LCC). Set up specific criteria for repair, including Built-In Test Equipment (BITE) requirements, testability, reliability, and maintainability; support equipment requirements; automatic test equipment; and manpower skills and facility requirements. State specific maintenance tasks, to be performed on the system. Define actions and support required for fielding and marketing the system. Address warranty considerations. The maintenance concept must ensure prudent use of manpower and resources. When formulating the maintenance concept, analysis of the proposed work environment on the health and safety of maintenance personnel must be considered. Conduct a LORA repair analysis to optimize the support system, in terms of LCC, readiness objectives, design for discard, maintenance task distribution, support