Acquisition Research Sponsored Report Series

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Acquisition Research Sponsored Report Series

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Phase Zero Contracting Operations (PZCO)—Strategic and Integrative Planning for Contingency and Expeditionary Operations
(Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School., 2012-05-02) Yoder, E. Cory; Long, William E.; Nix, Dayne E.; Contract Management (CM); Acquisition Research Program (ARP); Business and Public Policy (GSBPP)
Contracting in expeditionary operations is not a new phenomenon. What is new is the scope and magnitude that contracting and contractors play in today’s military operations. Even if global operating tempos decline, many experts believe that reliance on contractor personnel will remain at current levels, or even grow, in relation to the number of uniformed personnel. Lack of planning and sound contract integration at the strategic level leads to loss of efficiencies, lack of effectiveness, and, in many cases, outright fraud of the executing participants. The authors propose adopting an Integrated Planner and Executor (IPE) and embrace mandates for Operational Contract Support, including generating a thoroughly vetted Annex W into OPLANs. The authors contend that the best means to accomplish integration into existing war planning systems is by congressionally mandating, authorizing, and funding (via appropriation) the IPE positions at the flag and senior executive service (SES) levels within Service structures, such as at the JCASO. The authors recommend that JCASO have more authority within GCC and Service staffs—particularly to establish, monitor, and manage Annex W for GCC and the Services within the APEX framework. These recommendations will allow for greater efficiency and effectiveness in providing contracted support to all military operations.
The Army seeks a world class logistics modernization program
(Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, GraduateSchool of Business & Public Policy, 2004-06) Lucyshyn, William.; Snider, Keith F.; Maly, Robert.; Acquisition Research Program (ARP); Business and Public Policy (GSBPP)
Theory and Feasibility of Implementing Economic Input/Output Analysis of Department of Defense to Support Acquisition Decision Analysis and Cost Estimation
(Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2011-11-28) Regnier, Eva; Nussbaum, Dan; Operations Research (OR); Graduate School of Operational and Information Sciences (GSOIS)
In this project, Economic Input/Output analysis was used as the inspiration for a new approach to accounting for the supply-chain burden in estimating the fully burdened cost of fuel in the U.S. Department of Defense. A general model for the fully burdened cost of fuel was developed to demonstrate the multiplier effect by which the total amount of fuel required to supply a single gallon to the warfighter is greater than one gallon, due to fuel consumption in the supply chain. Using data on costs for the Defense Logistics Agency''Energy''s bulk fuels supply chain, a spreadsheet model was constructed and used to estimate the delivery costs for fuel to all consumption points in that supply chain. They ranged from less than a penny to over 70''/gal. Using information provided on the U.S. Marine Corps'' supply chain in Afghanistan, a model for fuel consumption at each location and in both transportation and force protection was constructed to estimate the fuel multipliers for each location. Several excursions from the baseline scenario illustrated the effect of potential changes in the supply chain. This work demonstrated the applicability of an Input/Output-based approach to estimating the supply-chain burden of fuel and other supplies in the Department of Defense, and highlighted data challenges in populating such a model.
The Future of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Support of the Marine Expeditionary Unit
(Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2011-11-03) Payton, Leslie T.; Operations Research (OR); Graduate School of Operational and Information Sciences (GSOIS)
The USMC Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is commonly referred to as the nation''s 911 force. It must be capable of executing a full spectrum of missions from low-intensity humanitarian assistance and noncombat evacuations to high-intensity major combat operations. The MEU''s structure and equipment are designed around this multi-mission requirement. However, the USMC owns the fixed-winged Shadow unmanned aircraft system (UAS) and is in the process of acquiring a small fixed-wing UAS, the small tactical UAS to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The USMC is also researching a cargo resupply UAS based on helicopter technology. The USMC focus on single-mission UAS does not fit with the MEUs mission requirements. This thesis will examine MEU mission requirements and recommend a UAS capability set that best supports MEU operations. From this recommended set of requirements, the thesis will use a cost analysis to determine a future UAS program of record.
Deriving the Cost of Software Maintenance for Software Intensive Systems
(Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2011-08-29) Sams, Bradley J.; Operations Research (OR); Graduate School of Operational and Information Sciences (GSOIS)
Throughout software''s lifetime, changes are introduced to the code in order to maintain the desired performance. These changes often create side effects, which cause other cascading effects elsewhere in the software or other system components with which the software interfaces. In a sense, the software degrades because of the maintenance performed on it, not because of a lack of maintenance upkeep. This pattern makes the cost of software maintenance difficult to predict, given the amount of variability in the upkeep process. Therefore, the best that program managers can hope for are heuristics that permit them to approximate annual operating budgets when calculating total ownership costs. Typically, these methods employ metrics used during development to estimate the annual cost of maintaining the software (i.e., source lines of code or function points). Through correlation and regression analysis, this thesis examines 62 programs that captured software maintenance data to determine a cost model for software maintenance. Even though a model was not built, the main contribution of this thesis is to provide a greater awareness of the complexity of estimating the costs for software maintenance. Additionally, this thesis provides insight to cost variables that may assist program managers when estimating annual software maintenance costs.
Total ownership cost - system software impacts
(Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2017-04-19) Naegle, Brad R.; Graduate School of Operational and Information Sciences (GSOIS)
Department of Defense (DoD) software-intensive systems and the software content in other systems will continue to grow and may dominate total ownership costs (TOC) in the future. These costs are exacerbated by the fact that, in addition to contracted development costs, the bulk of software sustainment costs are also contracted. All of these factors indicate that DoD system software will continue to b a very expensive portion of TOC. The software engineering environment remains immature, with few, if any, industry-wide standards for software development or sustainment. The Defense Acquisition System (DAS) is significantly dependent on mature engineering. System software size and complexity are key indicators of both development costs and sustainment costs, so initial estimates are critical for predicting and controlling TOC. Unfortunately, the software size estimating processes require a significant amount of detailed understanding of the requirements and design that is typically not available when operating the DAS without supplementary analyses, tools, and techniques. Available parametric estimating tools require much of the same detailed information and are still too inaccurate to be relied upon. Similarly, understanding the potential software complexity requires in-depth understanding of the requirements and architectural design. It is clear that the DoD must conduct much more thorough requirements analyses, provide significantly more detailed operational context, and drive the software architectural design well beyond the work breakdown structure (WBS) functional design typically provided. To accomplish this, the DAS must be supplemented with tools, techniques, and analyses that are currently not present. Program managers for software-intensive systems must supplement the DAS processes to • compensate for the immature software engineering environment • gain sufficient detailed information to perform reasonable software size and complexity estimates critical to understanding and managing system TOC • complete the inventory of derived and implied requirements, including the often neglected sustainability requirements, before the request for proposal (RFP) is issued • provide more detailed system operational context, beyond what exists in most Operational Mode Summary/Mission Profile documents • obtain more realistic contractor proposals in terms of cost and schedule associated with the software development and sustainment • drive the software architecture for a more sustainable, less complex design • monitor the software design process (metrics) to ensure the effort is progressing towards an effective, supportable, and testable design supporting the warfighter. The tools, techniques, and analyses presented in this research are designed to accomplish the tasks outlined above and are compatible with the Systems Engineering Process supporting the DAS. They also are designed to work together in a synergistic method to improve the software-intensive system development and sustainment performance influencing system TOC. Combined, the tools, techniques, and analyses provide a much improved understanding of the system and identify critical attributes that the software developers need to know to design an effective and supportable design. These tools help compensate for the immature software engineering environment, provide more detailed information needed to perform size and complexity estimates, and provide detailed operational context needed for proper software architectural design. They help produce superior RFPs and garner more realistic contractor proposals. They provide processes for monitoring critical software design activities and full test matrix crosswalks. All of these enhancements will help more accurately estimate and manage software TOC attributes.
Determining the best loci of knowledge, responsibilities and decision rights in major acquisition organizations
(Naval Postgraduate School, 2005-06-30) Dillard, John; Nissen, Mark E.; Graduate School of Operational and Information Sciences (GSOIS); Business & Public Policy (GSBPP); Acquisition Research Program (ARP); Operations Research (OR)
The DoD is a large, bureaucratic, rule-intensive organization that may not be suited well for its environment. Building upon prior research of acquisition centralization and knowledge dynamics, we employ computational methods to assess the behavior and performance of different organizational designs in varying environments. Our results reinforce Contingency Theory and suggest particular characteristics of different acquisiton environments make one organizational form relatively more or less appropriate than another. Practically, answers to our research questions have direct and immediate application to acquisition leaders and policy makers. Theoretically, we generalize to broad classes of organizations and prescribe a novel set of organizational design guides.
Employing organizational modeling and simulation to reduce F/A-18E/F F414 engine maintenance time
(Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2006-12-15) Hagan, Joel; Slack, William; Zolin, Roxanne; Dillard, John; Human Systems Integration (HSI) Certificate Program; Acquisition Management (AM); Business & Public Policy (GSBPP)
The goal of this project was to determine how to decrease the F414 engine throughput time at the Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Division (AIMD) at Naval Air Station (NAS) Lemoore, California. To achieve this goal, organizational modeling was employed to evaluate how changes to the organizational structure of the Lemoore AIMD affected engine throughput time. Data collected to build the organizational model was acquired via interviews with AIMD personnel. A baseline model of the AIMD organization was developed for the purpose of modeling the organization's current structure and performance. The actual, real-world duration required to conduct F414 maintenance was compared to the duration predicted by the model and determined to be within 3%. Once confidence was gained that the baseline model accurately depicted the organization's actual F414 maintenance performance, modifications or interventions to the model were made to evaluate how organizational changes would affect F414 maintenance duration. Interventions included paralleling the tasks associated with accomplishing administrative paperwork when initially receiving the F414 engine, and tasks associated with on-engine maintenance, combining personnel positions, adding personnel, and modifying the duration and frequency of meetings. The modeled results of these modifications indicated that the paralleling effort significantly decreased the F414 maintenance duration; likewise, decreasing meeting frequency and slightly increasing duration also facilitated a decreased duration.
Changing major acquisition organizations to adopt the best loci of knowledge, responsibilities and decision rights
(Naval Postgraduate School, 2006-09-30) Nissen, Mark; Barrett, Frank; Graduate School of Operational and Information Sciences (GSOIS); Acquisition Research Program (ARP); Operations Research (OR)
The DoD is a large, bureaucratic, rule-intensive organization that may no longer be best suited for its new environment. Building upon prior, multidisciplinary research, we draw uopn the best knowledge and practice in change management and analyze transformation from the classic Hierarchy to the Edge-like Holonistic organization, which offers excellent potential for performance improvement. Such analysis focuses on the processes of change from one organization form to another and leads to the generation of transformational plans, which can be used by acquisition leaders, practioners and policy makers to outlne steps--and leaps--required to affect fundamental organizational change. We also build upon prior work on computational modeling and experimentation to develop models of the transformation process, and we explore such models to emulate the behaviior of the alternate transformational plans noted above. By modeling and experimenting with processes of change, as opposed to processes of ongoing organizational routines, we begin to extend the state-of-the-art in computational modeling and experimentation. Practically, answers to our research questions have direct and immediate application to acquisitioin leaders and policy makers. Theoretically, we generalize to broad classes of organizational tranaformations and prescribe a novel set of organization redesign guides.