• - Use of military specifications and standards;
• - Use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI);
• - Defense Acquisition Board processes;
• - Contract Administration Services processes;
• - Procurement processes; and
• - Requirement processes.

Reducing Acquisition Cycle Time Through Workflow Management

The DoD is an incredibly large and complex organization. It develops products for its own use and supports internal and external research and development, engineering, production, and testing. Its products are the most sophisticated and intricate in the world. Yet increasingly, the DoD must sustain its world technological leadership within sharply reduced procurement budgets and personnel resources. As a means of preparing itself for the future, the U.S. Army Armament Research and Development Engineering Center (ARDEC), located at the Picatinny Arsenal, Dover, N.J., streamlined its acquisition process through implementation of a Technical Data workflow management system.

Procuring a major military weapon system, or components for a weapon system, requires careful attention to detail. The U.S. Army maintains equipment configuration profiles of all their weapons. These profiles provide product numbers and engineering drawings for all components of each weapon system. When product enhancements are performed, or when spare parts must be ordered, careful engineering reviews must be executed to ensure that the weapon will continue to perform within specifications. Multiple engineering laboratories, hazardous materials centers, and packaging offices spread across a wide geography work together to complete the review. At ARDEC, organizations in Rock Island, IL., Dover, N.J., Troy, N.Y., and Warren, MI., work together to prepare the engineering documentation to support procurement solicitations. This review and certification process often requires hundreds of individual processing points.

Technical Data Package Processing Before Workflow Management

Prior to implementation of the TDP Workflow Management System at ARDEC, TDPs were assembled by a paperbound, serial process. In 1989, ARDEC TDPs were being completed in 190 days, on average. More importantly, ARDEC was experiencing a 33% error rate on the TDPs that were produced. The error rate was even more troubling than the extensive time taken to complete the process because of the additional cost incurred. Once a TDP is completed, incorporated in a solicitation, and mailed to prospective bidders, correcting errors is more expensive than it would be if the error were discovered before it left the engineering centers. Prospective bidders must be notified, the bid time must be extended, and all steps included in the original solicitation must be retraced and performed again.

Figure 1 illustrates ARDEC's manual TDP business cycle before the TDP Workflow Management System was installed. This process was bound by paper. The controlling aspect of the process was the folder that contained all the documentation included in the TDP. Additional TDP documentation was added to the folder as it moved from processing point to processing point. This serial method was inefficient because processing capacity was wasted as employees waited for work to be completed at preceding processing points.

A Technical Data Package business process review study revealed that if certifying engineers and technicians had multiple access to the data, and if electronic routing replaced the paper folder, concurrent processes could take place and certain processes could be eliminated. In addition, controls could be programmed into the system so that managers could manage the process better.

Specifically, time controls could be placed at each processing point in the cycle. This would allow the managers to know the status of every technical data package. With this information, managers could identify specific jobs that were exceeding normal processing times and take the appropriate actions to resolve the problem. Not only did this improve the overall process efficiency, but managers no longer had to deal with irate customers asking why the process was taking so long.

Figure 2 illustrates the reengineered TDP process at ARDEC. This reengineering task was made possible through the assistance of the DACS and the application of the DACS supported OASYS software toolset. In fact, the TDP workflow application (called TDP Tracker) actually spawned the development of OASYS (see Figure 3).

Using the TDP Tracker, ARDEC has increased its productivity over 500%. ARDEC's current average for processing and certifying TDPs is now less than 30 days. Perhaps more importantly, ARDEC's TDP error rate is less than 1%.