By Cathy Hopkins,
DLA Aviation
Public Affairs
RICHMOND, VA – Amidst the wind, rain, and power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, Defense Logistics Agency Aviation leaders met recently with industry leaders in Richmond and via video teleconference making plans on how best to support our military services during the upcoming year.
The semi-annual Executive Committee meetings give DLA Aviation an opportunity to continue to build upon its cohesive relationships with its Strategic Supplier Alliance partners.
“During these meetings we are continuously seeking ways to implement improvements and develop strategies to streamline the acquisition process, improve best business practices, and supply chain processes,” said Patrick Finegan, DLA Aviation’s supplier relationship management lead. “It is through these periodic reviews and interactions that we can fully realize the capabilities of our partnerships in support of the warfighter.”
DLA Aviation met with strategic partners from General Electric, Moog, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman Corp, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney, Bell Helicopter, Boeing, Hamilton Sundstrand, and Sikorsky
Yvette Burke, DLA Aviation’s acquisition executive, took the opportunity to discuss Aviation’s fiscal 2013 priorities.
“Going forward into 2013, we will be operating in an increasingly constrained fiscal environment,” Burke told meeting attendees. “DLA’s goal is to reduce costs by 10 percent. To achieve this goal, we are counting on you to look at ways to reduce your costs and to help us identify where our processes are causing your costs to rise.”
“The meetings allow us to review performance, set aggressive objectives, and discuss strategies to meet ‘Big Idea’ goals with our strategic partners,” said Cindy McGee, acting director, Strategic Acquisition Programs. “In previous meetings, suppliers were all challenged to determine how they can work with DLA to achieve the Big Ideas. Now, they are telling us their ‘Big Idea’ plans.”
The DLA director’s five “Big Ideas” put the agency on a path to decrease costs by $10 billion over five years and include initiatives to decrease direct material costs, decrease operating costs, reduce inventory, improve customer service, and achieve audit readiness.
“Our goal for each meeting is to walk away with a clear, complete, agreed-upon plan of action to execute DLA Aviation priorities and support the agency’s strategic focus areas,” said McGee.
McGee said the meetings successfully raised challenges in the upcoming year and began setting plans in place to meet those challenges.
Latta, S.C. native, Thomas Sampson, DLA Aviation’s SRM working with Lockheed Martin, said he thought the meeting with Lockheed Martin went well and DLA Aviation goals for the meetings were accomplished.
“Lockheed Martin has agreed to lean forward and help with our goals of 50 percent reduction in production-lead time, 100 percent on-time delivery, and to continue to look for ways to save in material cost,” he said. “The staff was very happy that we awarded the Lockheed Martin joint opportunity six-year contract worth $415 million. Also, since 2009 to the present contract, we were able to see a 16.4 percent cost savings on this long-term contract,” Sampson said.
Robert Bailey, DLA Aviation’s SRM working with Moog, said the meeting was much more than a public relations event.
“The meeting was truly an open, honest, and productive discussion among business partners,” he said. “We both have areas where we can improve and we constructively discussed those. For example, we (DLA) need to do a better job adding items to contracts and Moog needs to do a better job of delivering on time. We discussed how we each could assist the other in correcting our individual and mutual issues.”
Carl Finnie, the SRM working with General Electric, agreed with Sampson on the success of the Executive Committee meetings.
“The meeting for General Electric overall was a huge success based on the accomplishment of key goals during (fiscal 2012) by the Strategic Supplier Alliance Improvement Teams,” he said. “Accomplishments that included a new joint opportunity contract, significant improvements in performance metrics, and developing new collaborative forecasting sessions.
“I feel very fortunate to be working with such a talented group of team members and management from GE, DLA, and our customers, they have allowed for this SSA to have so many successes this past (fiscal 2012),” Finnie said.
He also stated that if fiscal 2013 goals in the plan are accomplished, the GE/DLA Strategic Supplier Alliance will move to a partnering level, the highest level of the Supplier Relationship Scale.
