Rapid Development and Sustainment
NCMS Project #: 140825
Problem: The DoD is hampered by current policies, processes, and regulations, which govern development and acquisition to support maintenance and sustainment of the warfighter. Today, DoD’s focus is on executing independent programs that don’t take commercial best practices into consideration. These same policies, processes, and regulations limit industry’s ability to enter the defense industry market and implement industry acquisition best practices to DoD.
In contrast, commercial businesses manage integrated product lines across multiple products and services. The DoD can leverage this model as a basis for acquisition and sustainment strategies to overcome policies, processes, and regulations that negatively impact the ability to meet mission demand. The DoD can foster dynamic and innovative solutions for tomorrow’s warfighter by designing acquisition and sustainment portfolios that deliver an integrated suite of capabilities.
Benefit: Through an application of industry best practices across the DoD development and acquisition process identified through this initiative, public and private industry is expected to benefit by having a less restrictive means for entering the defense industry market. Industry will have a new market for offering development best practices and improvements for legacy products. Additionally, industry will better understand the approach and requirements format for development and delivery of capabilities to DoD activities, and associated DoD industry partners.
As a by-product of this initiative, several specific benefits applicable to the entire DoD will be identified and quantified. When widely adopted, DoD stands to benefit from clear requirements development and acquisition practices through a reduced supply and maintenance burden that improves equipment availability.
Solution/Approach: This initiative is designed to identify an alternative strategy, processes, and recommend policy changes that would align DoD processes more closely to industry best practices and enable the government to take advantage of efficiencies already proven by industry. The objective is to compare current DoD requiring, acquiring, and sustaining business processes and rules against best commercial business practices where integrated product line engineering and agile methods are applied.
Impact on Warfighter:
- Supply, maintenance management and maintenance touch labor reductions
- Reduce the required number of spares and consumable parts needed
DOD Participation:
- U.S. Marine Corps, Installations & Logistics (LPC)
- U.S. Marine Corps, Capabilities Development and Integration (LID)
- U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command, Assistant Commander, Acquisition Logistics Products and Services (AC ALPS)
Industry Participation:
- United Global Group Inc. (UGG)
- Hendrick Motorsports (HMS)
- Whitney, Bradley and Brown, Inc. (WBB)
- Ellis-NCMS
Benefit Area(s):
- Cost savings
- Repair turn-around time
- Obsolescence management and continued maintenance capability
- Improved readiness
Focus Area:
- Business processes/partnerships