FORT LEE, Va. –
The Defense Contract Management Agency released its updated Strategic Plan in March, and agency leaders are already working on accomplishing the goals.
Richard Fanney, the executive director of the Technical Directorate, and Michael Shields, the executive director of Quality Assurance, are spearheading the efforts to accomplish Goal #1, which is to enhance lethality through the on-time delivery of quality products.
Under the goal, there are four objectives:
◾Improve delivery performance by influencing timely delivery of production outputs
◾Improve product quality by influencing industrial base performance
◾Improve customer support and force readiness by reducing process cycle times
◾Enhance DoD’s protection of controlled unclassified information by ensuring contractors implement appropriate cyber requirements
According to Fanney, the objectives are multi-year that involve various initiatives and tasks to enhance warfighter support. For example, some of the tasks include establishing a strategic Quality Assurance Council with industry associations and major defense contractors and also expanding the use of joint industry and DCMA corrective action plan reviews to improve collaboration on data collection and analysis of root causes and issue resolution.
“These are high-level objectives, but our main focus is to shift more improved data sharing and risk analysis with the defense industrial base that helps with the agency’s Detection to Prevention efforts,” said Shields.
The first three objectives are focused on analytics, and the fourth objective, which focuses on cybersecurity, is a new mission for the agency. The agency is already partnering with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to develop industrial base cybersecurity requirements.
“These objectives allow us to use analytics to identify risks, especially when it comes to high value, high risk,” said Shields. “We want to use contractor data to identify opportunities for preventative actions, including looking at cost and delivery.”
Shields said that evaluating cost and delivery processes are important and can save customers money. “When things are done correctly the first time, you do not have to worry about replacement costs, and you do not have to absorb time, which can also affect your delivery schedule,” he said. “You also reduce the oversight cost of an item.”
Shields noted the overall strategic goal will help DCMA become more beneficial to customers and contractors.
“We want to collaborate more with our partners,” said Shields. “We want to offer value proposition to contractors, and we hope these objectives will improve the supply chains and that we, as an agency, become more integrated into the master production schedules of our contractors.”