LEAN THINKING


Applying lean business practices to single-award task and delivery order processing


by CPT Sean Dunstan, CPT Craig Falk and MAJ Jeremy Gottshall I


n the summer of 2014, we three Army logistics officers participated in the MG James Wright Graduate Business Fellowship and examined process time for single award indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity task and delivery orders based on a perception by the chief customer that orders were taking too long


to award. Tat customer was the the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM), supported by U.S. Army Contracting Command – Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (ACC-APG). Like all Army life-cycle management com- mands, CECOM relies on ACC for acquisition support.


Interviews with more than 20 process stakeholders at APG, a review of business intel- ligence data and subsequent statistical modeling revealed that current task and delivery order process times were characterized by a high degree of statistical variation.


Almost immediately we discovered that variability in process time is not related to the dollar value of an action, despite the conventional wisdom that higher-value actions should take longer because they warrant more compliance reviews. Instead, our research showed that a contracting officer’s workload at a given time and the length of time it takes to process contract actions correspond significantly. Figure 1 shows that as the amount of work-in-process actions or workload in a given month increases, so, too, does the average processing time for those actions.


Ultimately, lean-thinking analysis enabled successful classification of the forms of waste that characterized the task and delivery order process, including redundant steps that spur overprocessing, discordant views of cycle time and unproductive use of military personnel.


100 Army AL&T Magazine January–March 2015


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