Naval Logistics Symposium: “Acquisition Logistics”
July 20-22, 2009
Title: “Only a Multi-Pronged Strategy Can Advance the Function Life Cycle Logistics”
Author: Mr. Charles Borsch
7445 Carriage Hills Drive
McLean, Virginia 22102
charles.borsch@navy.mil
(703) 604-9985 (work)
The term for the function of “Acquisition Logistics” is most appropriately (and hereafter)
referred to as “Life Cycle Logistics.” Life Cycle Logistics (LCL) is effective to the
degree that there is a consistent understanding of LCL tenets, priorities, and required
technical outcomes. This “consistent understanding” is necessary, because of a strong
corresponding need for “consistent application” across a long span of defense systems
development and sustainment, that is characterized by the importance of long-lead
logistics strategies and adherence to that strategy across a diversity of public and private
organizations that have distinct roles in executing logistics strategies. It is this need of
coherent approach to each defense system’s complex life cycle of development,
sustainment, and upgrade that drives a multi-pronged approach to the function of Life
Cycle Logistics. Multiple organizations and types of logisticians have key roles that must
transition one to another across the span of years and milestone decision and execution
points, if readiness is to be sustained to the point of persistent operational availability in
the operational environment as a function of an efficient and optimally affordable
logistics support program.
The most common and visible role of functional LCL is this prescribed and linear pattern
of activities (see DAU LOG curricula or the DoD5000 “Defense Acquisition Guide”
Chapter 5) that are triggered by each stage of systems specification, initiation, and
development. So there are many LCL recommended actions to take, for each stage of the
“systems Acquisition” of a defense system increment or major upgrade. The sum of
these sequential actions is an established logistics support program that can sustain
systems performance capabilities to whatever was the performance-based degree of
availability and ownership cost affordability that was specified for operational use. This
prescriptive application by logisticians to each defense system increment of development
ultimately results in successful logistics support for that individual systems increment.
This paper acknowledges the rigor and full-attention focus required of logisticians during
each progressive stage in this linear LCL process, as the reason why logistics leadership
has concerted work to do, to ensure that this work processes are made proficient by
lessons learned across the enterprise and that the LCL workforce is competent in and
attuned to these new processes. The goal of these senior leadership actions in tandem is
to direct and steer the earliest course defense system Acquisition’s major decisions to be
made, towards maximal decision weight consideration of a logistics strategy and program
that can effectively and affordable sustain that system throughout their operational lives.
This is not work for individual sustainment, operational, in-service, maintenance, supply
chain, or even program office logisticians; as the following strategy hopes to make clear.
Increasingly, major programmatic decisions are occurring at earlier stages in the
Acquisition process. There is a strong desire to know technical and fiscal feasibility,
before committing to engineering and development of major new systems increment.
The Department is working to shorten systems development timeframes and hopefully
reduce associated acquisition cost, by doing so. This compression of key programmatic
decisions towards the left in this linear process and into the earlier stages of Acquisition,
highlights some historical disadvantages to the functions of LCL. Institutionally, the
LCL professional community is not engaged sufficiently early in order to strongly
influence these most pivotal early-phase Acquisition process activities. Logisticians
reside principally in Acquisition program offices and in systems commands that support
ongoing program, but are not evident during the generation of supportability-related
(Reliability, Maintainability, Maintainability, Ownership Cost) key performance
attributes or in building the business case what RAM and Ownership Cost capability
ranges of technical performance should be development or acquired. Logistician effort is
far more focused onto legacy system sustainment, rather than contributing to Acquisition
tasks that occur prior to the point of program initiation. In other words, LCL functions
historically commence within the context of program offices and at a point in systems
Acquisition that is beyond deciding upon a “material solution” and the setting of a
program baseline. This trend to set performance capability parameters including RAM
and Ownership Cost earlier in the Acquisition process, under the historic paradigm,
would mean even less time and opportunity to interject life cycle sustainment and
ownership cost affordability influence into early decision making. But this post-program
initiation degree of involvement is not acceptable, for a community and function whose
work in planning and executing individual sustainment programs is a major variable in
the collective readiness and availability of war fighting capabilities for operations.
To this end, and in order to increase functional and community influence at the earliest
and most pivotal stages of systems Acquisition, a multi-pronged strategy is required.
This multi-pronged strategy consists of a spectrum of Life Cycle Logistics activities that
address defense systems development programs collectively, in order to improve the
individual LCL approach to each. Senior leadership already has ongoing effort in the
following six areas, to intermittent degrees. The six vectors of LCL advancement are
mutually interdependent and contribute to each other’s success. No one of these points of
advancement will succeed greatly, if pursued in isolation. Now, they should be pursued
increasingly in tandem, which will reinforce their considerable interconnectedness as a
condition of LCL functional success.
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Generate a common understanding of “Life Cycle Logistics”
Shape the Life Cycle Logistics workforce
Shape DoD/Service5000 Series and Joint Staff policy and processes
Steer specification of performance design/development parameters
Actively participate in formal Acquisition program review/decision forums
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Routinely assess logistics support program execution adequacy
Generate A Common Understanding of “Life Cycle Logistics”
Given that LCL has the same scope and tenure as the life of an Acquisition program itself,
it is difficult for even career logisticians to grasp fully all of the functions attributed to it.
LCL connections to operational phase sustainment of systems is well understood, but less
so are contributions that can be made during the very earliest stages of systems
performance requirements generation and systems Acquisition. Professional functional
communities with more stringent certification prerequisites dominate early-phase
Acquisition work, and so it is not helpful that there is not also a professional LCL
discipline with academic discipline prerequisites. The DON majority LCL GS series
(GS-346), is one of a number of OPM GS 0300-0399 “General Administrative, Clerical,
and Office Services” categories of work; while DoD describes this GS series to GAO as
an enterprise-wide mission critical occupation (February 2009 GAO Report 09-235).
Understanding of the function must be far less the former, if O&S phase sustainment
effectiveness and affordability is to be the focus of LCL.
Mitigating this lack of a defining OPM professional standard is the responsibility of OSD
and their use of certification criteria, spearheaded by the Defense Acquisition University
and associated private institutions. The strategy for interjecting Life Cycle Logistician
professionalism into the Acquisition program arena begins with presenting a common
picture of how LCL operates, across the three segments of the DoDI 5000.2 Defense
Acquisition Management System. The intent is to inculcate a common understanding of
the function, one that links both function and workforce to systems development and to
the overarching goal of affordably sustain “persistent availability” of systems during
operations, and to adjust to changes in operational tempo and environment. The
following are representative terms, useful in several venues, that describe this goal or
end-state. As examples, one each for the three life cycle segments of Acquisition.
Pre-Systems Acquisition: Added missions and unforeseen new requirements are
major reasons why the acquisition portion of weapon system life cycle cost
rapidly inflates. Prudence and responsibility therefore, calls for earliest possible
quantified specification of sustainment-related performance capabilities with an
analysis-based range of threshold/objective design and development RAM
(Reliability, Availability, Maintainability) parameters. Such parameters (and to
only a slightly lesser degree “Ownership Cost”) are technical in nature and
inherent to systems operational effectiveness, and so the timing and definitiveness
of their specification should not be separate from the task of setting ranges of
performance targets for all other systems technical parameters.
Systems Acquisition: The best opportunities for Life Cycle Logistics to mitigate
or optimize total system life cycle sustainment costs all occur during the initial
phases of a system’s baselining and development. While earliest possible,
analyses-backed, life cycle sustainment planning and execution is taught and also
acknowledged as making strong business sense, it nevertheless falls to
exceptional degrees of Life Cycle Logistics individual professionalism and
advocacy to ensure that the program resources and decisions that most affect
system support effectiveness and affordability are not deferred to later
development or even the operational phase, during which actual support and
sustainment work occurs.
Sustainment: The overarching goal of Life Cycle Logistics during the operations
and support phase is to ensure that maintenance and repair, training, supply
management, and all other logistics disciplines coalesce into an integrated
logistics support program that is capable of sustaining system war fighting
performance; whatever the operational environment; to persistently high rates of
availability. Further, that rates of logistics-enabled systems availability can
adjust to operational tempo and still retain optimal sustainment affordability.
Shape the Life Cycle Logistics Workforce
Acquisition functions rely partly on policy and processes and partly on the ability of that
function’s professional workforce to interpret, advocate, and execute accordingly. This is
true of the work required to shape and refine LCL, as it constantly adjusts to changing
circumstances to meet operational need for systems effectiveness and affordable logistics
support. Worthwhile policies and guidance can fail wherever they overlap and can
viewed as conflicting. In such cases, success then heavily relies on persuasiveness and
interpretation rather than clear-cut objective criteria or benchmark metrics. An example
is the Total Life Cycle Systems Management (TLCSM) initiative. Originated by the
Logistics community, the TLCSM premise is simply that no major programmatic
decision is made, concerning systems development and sourcing, that does not to the
greatest extent possible favor alternatives which target system life cycle supportability
and ownership cost effectiveness. But this core LCL tenet often conflicts with equally
strong warrants, that cause the program to focus almost exclusively on its next formal
milestone event. Regardless how difficult the job of creating and implementing new
logistics processes and programs, such work will therefore always be incomplete until
there is set into place a capable LCL workforce who can execute and leverage to the
fullest; starting with building a business case to secure necessary resources.
Adding to the above challenges to LCL work and workforce, during the earliest phases of
systems Acquisition, and to the dependence on a functional workforce for LCL success,
is the fact that success during these earliest planning phases for sustainment is measured
considerably later; during actual performance of a logistics sustainment program. So in
the nearer term, success is best “indicated” by how consistently program management
focuses on the allocation of resources, analyses, and decision weight towards LCL and
the establishment of a life cycle sustainment program.
Compared to the span of a typical logistician’s career, the time needed to attain full LCL
career certification is short. But the program management environment will always
change and adapt in new ways to press for sufficient resources to plan for and begin to
execute programs. This is no less true of an Acquisition program’s life cycle logistics
program. So there is competitive advantage over time, in extending individual Life Cycle
Logistician expertise into further areas of systems Acquisition. Two areas that should be
a focus are the financial management side of all other Acquisition functional
communities that operate within program offices and the slightly further afield range of
work and competencies associated with systems performance capability requirements
generation, or the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS).
This broadening of LCL career range to competency in other Acquisition career fields,
expanded also in terms of the milestone phases that correspond with all three segments of
systems Acquisition management, takes more time than is required for full DAWIA
(Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act) LCL certification. Budget
considerations are a constraint at present, towards pressing for further investment in
individuals beyond the point of attaining full LCL certification. But at that point, a
majority of one’s career is still ahead. Senior leadership must factor into the equation the
long-term returns on investment in individuals, as they advance their careers across
functional and enterprise bounds. The Department most needs Life Cycle Logisticians
who can operate effectively across organizational and functional bounds, to later in their
careers help devise new process innovations and to preponderantly carry out the work in
the remainder of these six concerted tasks for senior leadership:
Shape DoD/DON 5000 Series and Joint Staff (CJCSI) Policy and Process
Individual Life Cycle Logisticians have little time to track the many initiatives that
directly target, or otherwise greatly affect, logistics and sustainment functions across the
entire systems Acquisition spectrum. Many more such initiatives are proposed, than
might be suggested by the pace at which consolidating Joint Staff (CJCSI 3170) and
DoD/Services (5000 series) policies and manuals are issued. Regardless of their numbers,
all viable initiatives must be tested for their feasibility, economy, joint applicability, and
potential to streamline processes, before any are deemed to have utility. These
instructions are therefore just the codification into policy of whichever among them have
survived such testing and have demonstrated merit for broad based implementation.
The third facet then of this multi-pronged approach, is an active role by which LCL
expertise works to shape the next generation of those Acquisition processes, tools and
models, business rules, analytics, and performance based strategies that will change how
logistics support is implemented by Life Cycle Logisticians. Across our logistics
functional community, there is expertise sufficient to contribute to most new policy and
process initiatives that are proposed for the requirements generation and systems
development aspects of Acquisition. The experienced views of these Life Cycle
Logisticians need to be applied to those initiatives that have the strongest potential for
contributing to the functions and business of logistics. But this expertise will have to be
marshaled and better directed, towards this purpose. Senior leadership must decide
which initiatives to pursue and how uniformly the evolving new process initiatives should
be applied to sustainment logistics programs, both new and ongoing.
Steer Specification of Performance Design/Development Parameters
This task is an area of great opportunity for the LCL function. Defense system
Acquisitions, whether new or major upgrades, begin with the formal JCIDS specification
of a set of systems performance capability design parameters that are intended meet
quantitatively specified operational needs. These performance criteria are then matched
in analysis to whatever commercial capabilities may already exist and that may be
tailored to meet the JCIDS performance capabilities specified. This assessment will
determine also whether a more comprehensive design and development process must
instead be undertaken. In either case, there are sustainment-related technical
performance capabilities that must be inherent to the resultant weapon or IT system, in
order to craft a logistics support program that maximizes systems operational availability
at optimally affordable ownership cost. This overarching goal of persistently high
Availability of war fighting capabilities is the focus of the life cycle logistics support
program.
Structuring such an Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) program, to sustain all key war
fighting capability parameters, so that they all perform to maximal degrees of operational
availability is neither difficult or timely in the course of systems development, given
comfortably adequate program funding or exceptionally high operational priority. But
since these conditions cannot be counted upon, it falls principally to the LCL function to
act early to add the dimension of total system life cycle “affordability” to the functioning
of logistics support. This dimension of affordable performance of the sustainment of
systems in operation must be present from the start of systems Acquisition, since it is the
means by which relative cost effectiveness can be attributed to changes in rates of
systems availability provided, in view of changes in operational environment and tempo.
The first and best opportunity for LCL to affect the life cycle costs associated with
sustainment (a majority cost category for most major systems) is during this earliest
Acquisition stage of specifying an evolving system’s performance design and
development parameters and related JCIDS criteria.
Involvement in this earliest Acquisition stage (JCIDS), for the purpose of LCL
effectiveness and affordability contribution is historically very limited, but is increasingly
less so. The reason, is that while it is easy to notionally appreciate the “cause and effect”
dependency of systems life cycle sustainment effectiveness and affordability on earliest
possible design and development of RAM and related performance parameters, these
dependencies have been difficult to quantify. Better application of regularly measured,
analyzed, and reported logistics program sustainment and related cost; associated with the
systems that now perform the capabilities that are to be replaced or upgraded; will
improve that situation. So until a steadier stream of such “business case” reinforcing
quantitative analysis and data begins to feed back more routinely from the operations and
support side of LCL into the “requirements and program initiation” side of LCL, there
will continue to be a fall-back, brute-force, reliance on adherence to DoD and DON
policies designed to ensure full involvement into JCIDS for sustainment performance
specification purposes.
Policy advances of the past few years, as suggested above, have opened the door to Life
Cycle Logisticians to participate in JCIDS. LCL is by nature the chief advocate of
sustainment related performance criteria. To that end OPNAV N4 (Fleet Readiness and
Logistics) has a “principal” role in the Department’s earliest Acquisition program review
and decision forums (“Gate Reviews”). Starting with 2004’s SECNAV 5000.02C
Instruction, and as later adopted OSD-wide by 2008, JCIDS policy states that sustainment
related performance parameters must be specified among the sub-set of “key” criteria for
development. Adherence to this policy, including how realistic is the “threshold and
objective” range of performance capability specified for development, is a responsibility
for LCL leadership; especially given that there is no such staff expertise on issues of
sustainment performance, in requirements generation offices.
Nevertheless, LCL involvement in JCIDS is a first and best opportunity to provide ranges
of systems performance design and development parameters, plus ownership cost targets,
ahead of the establishment of a new program baseline and the assignment of a program
manager to execute. JCIDS is also the opportunity to express selective other “key”
sustainment related performance parameters and also non-mandatory “other”
performance factors into the development consideration mix. If expressible in
quantitative terms, these other criteria have no better advocate in the process that LCL.
On a selective bases, these factors include manpower integration, diagnostic/prognostic
and health monitoring, energy consumption, and the facilities and environmental
infrastructure.
Actively Participate in Formal Acquisition Program Review/Decision Forums
There are many program review and decision milestone opportunities across the course of
iterative, incremental development of major defense systems Acquisition. In order that
overall progress is not unduly lengthened, major review and decision point have been
compressed into earlier and earlier phases. The Gate Review forum for these decision
points, are the point at which LCL input into JCIDS is validated and made a central part
of the integral analysis of “material solution” alternatives process. From these Gate
Review results, come a decision on a favored hardware solution or that there is need for a
competition among viable prototypes. While there has been little past role for LCL in
these pivotal life cycle defining early decisions, there is now the opportunity to exert
great influence; mainly as a result of the kinds of concerted effort along several fronts
that this paper advocates. But LCL leadership has a strong Gate Review role only to the
extent that they can present business cases for steering major decision towards those
“material solution” alternatives and core systems design parameters that can be shown to
most effectively and affordably sustain systems during their operations and support
phases.
Routinely Assess Logistics Support Program Execution Adequacy
The supportability-related systems performance capability parameters (i.e., RAM,
Ownership Cost, Energy, etc.) that are specified in JCIDS and conveyed to program
management for execution, have a legacy of relatively low past decision weight in terms
of making major program decisions. The current strong considerations for the RAM and
life cycle Ownership Cost side of technical performance capabilities, as a part of the
“key” specification sub-set, did not randomly evolve, as a function of a new and sudden
understanding of their consequences to total system/total life cycle operational
effectiveness and ownership cost affordability. Instead, RAM as a JCIDS systems
development priority was not as prevalent as deemed warranted, and so became subject
of Joint Chiefs, OSD, and (earlier) DON policy mandating consideration for RAM as a
key parameter (KPP). Diligence on KPPs is crucial, given that any performance
specification that is not among the “key” performance sub-set is correctly subject to
waiver outright or to performance threshold level tradeoffs by program management,
once new programs or program upgrade programs are initiated.
In these circumstances, it is important to sustain visibility into how sustainment
performance is being translated into action, through program development planning and
execution. There has always been an independent logistic authority assessment or audit,
of the progress of ongoing weapon systems development programs in the area of ILS.
The benchmark target for this assessment must continue to be the state and adequacy of
logistics support at the time of initial systems introduction into operations and
sustainment. Oversight by senior LCL leadership is essential in keeping this assessment
function robust and to ensure that assigned logistician assessors are authoritative in their
areas of expertise. Again, another example of the interdependence of this multi-pronged
strategy.
To conclude, if these functions and roles of LCL are all addressed in tandem
(involvement in early JCIDS, competency of the workforce, business case input into the
early Gate Reviews, etc.) then such routine logistics assessments may still be needed.
But more for their advisory benefit to program management and to the sustainment
infrastructure, and less as a function of oversight and enforcement.