Since
I last talked to you via the "President's Message" in
January, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. Besides
a thought-provoking hot topic forum in March on how defense
innovation differs from commercial innovation, the main
accomplishment was the sponsoring of the DAU Acquisition
Community Symposium on 15 April 2008. The Symposium had a
logistics bent : The Defense Life Cycle Management
Challenge: Innovation in Acquiring, Sustaining and Improving
DoD Weapon Systems. The conference included key senior
members of the DoD leadership team and industry subject
matter experts. Before the official opening of the
conference, the DAU Alumni Association President - yours
truly - presented the "State of DAUAA." A copy of the
presentation can be found under "What's New" at the top of
this page - the Alumni Association Home Page (www.dauaa.org
<http://www.dauaa.org/>
). The Honorable John Young, Undersecretary of Defense,
Acquisition, Technology and Logistics presented the
morning keynote address, which - among other things -
directed those filling key acquisition positions to identify
and eliminate processes that did not have value-added. He
also said that he was not convinced that DoD needs an update
of the 5000 directives at this time except for statute
policy changes that have come about in the past several
years. His emphasis was on reducing the bureaucratic burden
on program managers.
Mr. Young's keynote was followed by a Service Acquisition
Executive (SAE) Panel, moderated by the Honorable James I.
Finley, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Acquisition and
Technology. The Service panelists were: Mr. Dean Popps,
Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition,
Logistics and Technology; Mr. Carl Siel, Chief Systems
Engineer, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for
Research, Development and Acquisition, (who filled in for
Mr. John Thackrah, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy
for Research, Development & Acquisition), and Ms. Sue
Payton, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for
Acquisition. The panel presented several service initiatives
for effective, yet reduced logistics support. Several
questions regarding
the AF Tanker competitive acquisition were fielded adroitly
by Ms. Payton. The SAE Panel was followed by a panel of
industry leaders - from
Raytheon,
Lockheed Martin, Northrop,
Accenture, and PRTM. One of the
main points to emerge from this panel was the need to
re-energize the Performance-Based Logistics Concept. After
lunch, the afternoon keynote was presented by Mr. Alan
Estevez, Principal Assistant DUSD (Logistic
and Materiel Readiness). He stressed the need to set and
meet availability requirements (Key Performance Parameters)
as identified by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in CJCSI 3170.01.
The afternoon keynote was followed by two sessions of 4
tracks. This allowed a Symposium attendee to participate in
2 of the 4 tracks.
The 4 tracks included the following:
Track 1 <https://acc.dau.mil/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=207400&lang=en-US>
- Innovation in Acquiring Weapon Systems;
Track 2 <https://acc.dau.mil/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=207401&lang=en-US>
-
Innovations in Sustaining weapon Systems;
Track 3 <https://acc.dau.mil/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=207433&lang=en-US>
- Innovations in Improving Weapons Systems; and
Track 4 <https://acc.dau.mil/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=207434&lang=en-US>
- Hirsch Award Research Paper Competition Synopses. Slide
Shows
from both the plenary session and the tracks were
released to the Acquisition Community Connection (ACC) (https://acc.dau.mil).
At the evening banquet, the keynote address was presented by
Mr. Paul Cusack, Head, Caterpillar Logistics Services
Division; Mr. Cusack addressed how 6-Sigma was used by
Caterpillar to reduce waste and get the product to
the customer quickly and efficiently. After this
presentation and dinner, the DAUAA David Acker Award for
Skill in Communications was awarded to Dr. James Finley,
Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for A&T - a most deserving
award based on Dr. Finley's
outstanding support of defense acquisition in general and
DAU in particular, through the Defense AT&L eLetter and as a
guest practitioner at DAU executive training courses. The
DAU Hall of Fame awards were also
presented as part of the banquet event. The recipients were
Mr. Jon Etherton, President, Etherton & Associates, Mr.
Charles Cochrane, a long-time former Department Chair and
professor at DAU and Colonel Rudy Ehrenberg, a former DSMC
Dean of Administration and Services. The evening
ceremonies concluded with a presentation of cash awards to
the winners of the DAU Alumni Association Edward Hirsch
Acquisition Research and Writing Award (the Hirsch Award)
for 2008. There were 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place awards. This
latter program - initiated by Paul Alfieri in 2007 as a
joint DAUAA and DAU Research Department project - was a huge
success for the Association. Winning papers were included
in the April 2008 Defense Acquisition Research Journal -
which was
distributed at the Symposium. Hats off to Paul for a great
job leading and coordinating the Hirsch Awards project.
It has been a hectic, but professionally productive time for
your Association, and we are already searching for a theme
for next year's Symposium. If you have any ideas, please
share them with either me or other members of the
Association Board.
Take care, and have a great summer.
Sincerely,
Bill Bahnmaier
President
DAU Alumni Association
About Bill Bahnmaier, DAUAA President:
Bill Bahnmaier is a retired Marine and a former (retired)
instructor at the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). In
his last tour of duty as a Marine he was a major system PM –
the Marine Corps Assault Amphibian. Since retirement,
Bahnmaier works as an official volunteer at DAU and also is
a part time consultant and instructor on defense acquisition
matters. He and his wife Peggy reside in Alexandria, VA.
They have 9 nephews and nieces and 15 great nephews and
nieces.
.bmp)
