CONSTRAINTS AND CONTROLS


Industry Works to Manage Spending in Line With Government Initiatives


by Brittany Ashcroft A


s the U.S. government and DoD face the financial realities before them, industry is attempting to do its part to effectively man-


age costs and control spending.


Four industry representatives addressed this issue during the PEO/SYSCOM Commanders’ Conference. In a Nov. 1 session titled “Effective Industry Strate- gies for Obtaining Cost Management and Control in Defense Spending,” representatives from Lockheed Mar- tin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., DRS Technologies Inc., and MicroTech described how their companies are react- ing to the financial challenges of a tight federal budget and a sluggish economy, as well as how they are working together to achieve success while cutting costs and improving efficiency.


Improving communication between gov- ernment and industry was a common theme. “Effective communication, prob- ably the most critical avenue of improving


126


process efficiencies, is often overlooked,” said Mark Newman, DRS Technolo- gies Chairman and CEO. “I believe one straightforward initiative we can take that will provide measurable and significant results is to reinvigorate communication between the government customer and the industry provider.”


Newman highlighted the Army’s Net- work Integration Evaluations as a “great example of open communication prior to contract award;” the government can eval- uate equipment and technology, request adjustments, and reevaluate a product before awarding a contract, he said. “This is an example of good, upfront commu- nication that leads to better products and more efficiency in the acquisition system,” Newman said.


A related concern is the challenge of re- quirements definition, said Tony Jimenez, President and CEO, MicroTech. “Many times, what we find is folks don’t really know what they want; they just know they


want something,” Jimenez said. “And a lot of times we find that we desperately need to sit down with the end user and figure out what is it that you’re trying to solve. One of the challenges to that is not being able to reach out to the right person.”


Ensuring that industry and the acquisi- tion community can deliver capability to theater is another aspect of improving cost control and assessing value.


“My concern is that we get too much [of] a gap between mission capability we’ve created and mission capability that we’ve deployed,” said Michael Joyce, Senior Vice President of Operations and Pro- gram Management, Lockheed Martin.


“So while we have all this great new inven- tion we’ve done, we have to now go field it if we’re going to see the true value of it in the world. … as budgets get more tight, we do have to constrain our capability appetite so that we can field real missions out there in service, actually delivering the goods.”


Army AL&T Magazine


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180