Acquisition Streamlining: Progress and Challenges

Abstract

Acquisition streamlining began as a DoD-wide effort to eliminate unnecessary specifications and standards for major weapon systems and to make others more specific to the applications. It has also given industry more opportunity to be innovative by conveying performance instead of process requirements. That initial success has led to the expansion of acquisition streamlining's scope to include procurement procedures and the requirements definition process. The Military Departments are pursuing acquisition streamlining in their own ways. The Army has aggressively embraced the initiative by completely revising its entire acquisition system; the Navy has integrated acquisition streamlining into a Navy-wide productivity improvement program; and the Air Force has emphasized faster and more efficient acquisition through changes in its organizational structure and acquisition procedures. In the Military Department experience, several streamlining approaches stand out as effective. 1) Avoiding premature use of specifications and standards; 2) Tailoring specifications to meet application-unique requirements; 3) Conducting tradeoff analyses of cost and performance in establishing and updating performance requirements; and 4) Using nondevelopmental items rather than undertaking new development.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADA198880

Entities

People

  • Fred L. Adler

Organizations

  • LMI

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircraft Equipment
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Anti-Tank Weapons
  • Business Administration
  • Contracts
  • Control Systems
  • Engineering
  • Life Cycle Costs
  • Logistics
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Acquisition
  • Military Equipment
  • Organizational Structure
  • Procurement
  • Standards
  • Test And Evaluation

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Systems Analysis and Design