Services Supply Chain in the Department of Defense: Comparison of Acquisition Management Practices in Army, Navy, and Air Force

Download
Author
Apte, Aruna
Apte, Uday
Rendon, Rene G.
Date
2010-08-23Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper presents the results of our empirical studies of current management practices in services acquisition in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The primary objective of these studies was to develop a comprehensive understanding of how services acquisition is being managed within as well as across individual military Services. In these empirical studies, we developed and deployed a web-based survey to collect primary data. Specifically, we studied the current management practices in areas such as contract characteristics, and we studied acquisition management methods, including regional- or installation-level acquisition, use of the project management approach, acquisition leadership, and ownership of requirements. We also studied other program management issues such as the ability of personnel responsible for acquisition, adequacy of acquisition billets and their fill rates, and training provided to services acquisition personnel.
We found that for the most part, the services contracts awarded and administered conformed to our expectation. For example, most services contracts are competitively bid, fixed-priced awards with minimal use of any type of contract incentives. The survey data also confirmed that the Navy uses a regional approach in services acquisition, while the Army and the Air Force use an installation-level approach. These differences, in turn, appear to be having important implications for other acquisition management practices, such as the use of project management and contract surveillance. One surprising finding of the study was that the project teams are often led by the contracting officer as opposed to by a formally designated project manager who is responsible for the overall success of the service project. Finally, the survey respondents indicated that the number of authorized staff positions for services acquisition was inadequate and that the existing billets were inadequately filled.
The analysis and comparison of management practices in different military services was used as the basis to develop, and report in this paper, our preliminary recommendations for improving the management of the services supply chain in the Department of Defense.
Description
Sponsored Report (for Acquisition Research Program)
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.NPS Report Number
NPS-CM-10-161Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Services Supply Chain in the Department of Defense: Comparison and Analysis of Acquisition Management in the Army, Navy, and Air Force
Apte, Aruna; Apte, Uday; Rendon, Rene G. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2010-04-30); NPS-AM-10-051This paper presents the results of our empirical studies of current management practices in services acquisition in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The primary objective of these studies was to develop a comprehensive ... -
Managing the Services Supply Chain in the Department of Defense: Empirical Study of the Current Management Practices in the Army
Apte, Aruna; Apte, Uday; Rendon, Rene G. (2009-09-30); NPS-CM-09-136This paper presents the results of the fourth research project in our ongoing research on the management of services acquisition in the Department of Defense. In this empirical study, we developed and used a Web-based ... -
Managing the services supply chain in the Department of Defense: an empirical study of current management practices
Apte, Aruna U.; Apte, Uday; Rendon, Rene G. (Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2009); NPS-GSBPP-09-009This paper presents the results of our ongoing research on the management of services acquisition in the Department of Defense. In this empirical study we developed and used a web-based survey to collect data on the ...