Air Force Commodity Councils: Leveraging the Power of Procurement

Abstract

The United States Air Force is always looking for ways to improve practices while leveraging taxpayers' dollars. The Air Force currently spends about one-third of its annual budget on purchased goods and services. This offers the Air Force a large target in which to seek cost savings. Commercial firms have moved toward a commodity-council approach for purchasing in recent years, and the cost reductions realized have been impressive. Findings have shown that the increased leverage from commodity councils will optimize buying power for the Air Force, reduce duplication of effort, improve customer support, and minimize supply-chain costs through integration and collaboration. "Commodity Council" is a term used to describe a cross-functional sourcing team designed to create a centralized purchasing strategy and establish centralized contracts for enterprise-wide requirements. The commodity council drives commonality and standardization and ensures the leveraging of purchasing volume. The key to this approach is to rely on market experts in the specific commodity category to make well-informed, market-savvy decisions that fully meet all enterprise-wide requirements for a commodity. A "commodity" is simply defined as a segmentable category of goods and/or services. Note, this definition does not imply an expendable or non-complex item. In this research, the author analyzes the experiences of the newly formed Air Force Information Technology Commodity Council (AFITCC) at Headquarters Standard Systems Group (HQ SSG or SSG), Maxwell Air Force Base (MAFB), Gunter Annex, Alabama, for results and lessons learned. Specifically, how did the Air Force set up its first commodity council? What have been the results of this commodity council? What lessons have been learned? What should be done differently for future implementation? For example, what steps are still needed to reach the Air Force's goal of having all commodity councils fully utilized by 2008?

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 30, 2004
Accession Number
ADA498706

Entities

People

  • Beth Rairigh

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Air Force
  • Best Practices
  • Business Administration
  • Commerce
  • Commodities
  • Cost Reductions
  • Governments
  • Laptop Computers
  • Lessons Learned
  • Management Personnel
  • Operating Systems
  • Organizational Structure
  • Procurement
  • Supply Chain
  • Teamwork
  • United States

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Government Contracting/Procurement.
  • Systems Analysis and Design