Acq Notes

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a strategy for continuously improving performance at every level and in all areas of responsibility. It combines fundamental management techniques, existing improvement efforts, and specialized technical tools under a disciplined structure focused on continuously improving all processes. Improved performance is directed at satisfying such broad goals as cost, quality, schedule,

Sustaining Engineering involves the identification, review, assessment, and resolution of deficiencies throughout a system’s life cycle. It spans the technical tasks of engineering, logistics investigations, and analyses to ensure continued operation and maintenance of a system with managed (i.e., known) risk. Sustaining Engineering Tasks Sustaining Engineering tasks include the following: [1,2] Collection and triage of

Supportability analysis is the procedures and methodologies employed to accomplish the planning, development, systems engineering, production, and management that are essential to ensure logistics supportability of military systems and equipment delivered to users. It’s conducted as an integral part of the Systems Engineering Process beginning at program initiation and continuing throughout program development. Supportability analyses

Supportability is the degree to which system design characteristics and planned logistics resources meet system requirements. Supportability is the capability of a total system design to support operations and readiness needs throughout the life-cycle of a system at an affordable cost. It provides a means of assessing the suitability of a total system design for

The Support Concept defines the overall logistics end state in achieving Product Support. The Program Manager (PM) establishes logistics support concepts (e.g., organic, two-level, three-level, contractor, partnering, etc.) early in the program, and refines the concepts throughout program development.  In developing the support concept, each program should develop an affordable strategy that: [1] Positions and

  Supply Chain Management is a set of approaches utilized to efficiently integrate suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, and stores so that merchandise is produced and distributed in the right quantities, to the right location, and at the right time, in order to minimize system-wide cost while satisfying service level requirements. [1]   Website: DoD Manual 4140.01

Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.  The process establishes a common agreement for engineering criteria, terms, principles, practices, materials, items, processes, and equipment parts, and components. An organization can benefit from standardization because it: [2,4] Enables mass production Enables customization Improves supplier coordination Improves quality Enables simplification Enables delayed differentiation Lowers

A Supply Alliance is a business relationship between a buyer and a supplier.  They both focus on achieving continuous improvements while squeezing costs out.  These alliances emphasize the inflow of innovation from the supplier partner and foster a relationship based upon mutual trust and the pursuit of common goals. The alliance members may share information, resources,

Reliability is critical because it contributes to a system’s warfighting effectiveness as well as its suitability in terms of logistics burden and the cost to fix failures. For each system, there is a level of basic reliability that must be achieved for the system to be militarily useful, given the intended Concept of Operations (CONOPS).

Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) (10 U.S.C. §2474) for Depot-Level Maintenance is defined as “a public-private partnership for depot-level maintenance under a cooperative arrangement between an organic depot-level maintenance activity and one or more private sector entities to perform DoD or Defense-related work and/or to utilize DoD depot facilities and equipment. Other government organizations, such as program

The Product Support Strategy (PSS) is part of the Acquisition Strategy and addresses Product Support as in life cycle sustainment and continuous improvement of product affordability, reliability, and supportability. It ensures that system support and life cycle affordability considerations are addressed and documented (including the depot maintenance requirements and the implications of core requirements) and

The Product Support Manager (PSM) is responsible for managing the support functions required to field and maintain the readiness and operational capability of major weapon systems, subsystems, and components. They’re also responsible for accomplishing the overall integration of Product Support through government activities or via a contract with a commercial organization. The support functions the

Product Support is the application of the package [called Product Support Package (PSP)] of integrated logistics elements and support functions necessary to sustain the readiness and operational capability of a system. It includes the logistics elements of manpower and personnel, technical data, facilities, maintenance planning, supply support, and computer resource support. They must be integrated

Performance-Based Life-Cycle Product Support (PBL) implementation captures the range of capability solutions that could be employed on a program regarding support/logistics. The approach is incremental, in that each alternative builds on the previous category. In all cases, the system’s sustainment parameters are projected and measured during the design process and then re-assesses once the system

  A Performance-Based Agreements (PBA) documents the negotiated and agreed-upon level of support and associated funding required to meet performance requirements. A PBA with the user states the objectives that form the basis of the Performance-Based Life-Cycle Product Support effort to meet operational requirements. They establish the negotiated baseline of performance and corresponding support necessary

A Non-Developmental Item (NDI) was coined by Congress in 1986 to describe items that were previously developed. NDI according to (FAR 2.101) means: Any previously developed item of supply used exclusively for governmental purposes by a Federal agency, a State or local government, or a foreign government with which the United States has a mutual

Materiel Availability (Am) is the percentage of the total inventory of a system operationally capable (ready for tasking) of performing an assigned mission at a given time, based on materiel condition. This can be expressed mathematically as: Materiel Availability also indicates the percentage of time that a system is operationally capable of performing an assigned

Maintainability is the ease with which a product can be maintained in order to isolate defects or their cause, correct defects or their cause, meet new requirements, make future maintenance easier, or cope with a changing environment. The design emphasis on maintainability is to reduce the maintenance burden and Supply Chain by reducing the time,

The Maintenance & Sustainment strategy is developed from the projected system’s reliability and the preliminary sustainment Concept of Operations (CONOPS) to meet the operational requirement during the Technology Development (TD) Phase. It’s used to determine the supply chain performance requirements (Core Capability Planning and Analysis), along with the key enabling features needed to implement the