Creating Leaner Defense Programs
Defense affordability – it’s a phrase that will be repeated throughout 2011. Deficit reduction pressures are finally hitting DoD – including a $78 billion top-line cut over five years, with a possible reduction of up to 47,000 troops. Going forward, programs will be designed for affordability, not desire. Unaffordable technical requirements will be discarded at program inception.
From the Navy’s next generation ballistic missile submarine to the Air Force’s long range bomber and Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle, cost will be a critical factor in the development of new weapons systems.
Aviation Week’s Affordability Requirements Forum will highlight the new business processes and illustrate how certain programs are adhering to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics’ directives to treat affordability as a requirement. You will learn how programs are getting “more without more” and achieving BETTER BUYING POWER.
This two day forum will familiarize you with DoD’s new processes. You will learn how to:
- Evaluate cost drivers and interact with combat developers to ensure that the full cost impact of requirements is understood
- Establish affordability targets that will be treated by program managers as key performance parameters
- Conduct a systems engineering tradeoff analysis: Demonstrate the influence of design decisions (and alternatives) on affordability and how a product can become less expensive without sacrificing necessary functionality
- Drive productivity through will cost/should cost management: Determine what a system should cost if cost efficiencies are applied
- Participate in a Government-Industry idea exchange: Which data requests/reporting requirements and acquisition practices cause industry to adopt processes and make investments that increase non-value added costs?
- Drive down costs by encouraging supplier innovation
Attend and gain valuable information that will enable you to:
- Create leaner defense programs
- Understand what DoD’s new way of doing business means for your program
- Develop program skills and capabilities that will drive affordability
Sessions will present case studies on how the following programs are adhering to this new reality:
- SSBN-X nuclear missile submarine
- Presidential Helicopter
- Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV)
- Air Force/Navy Long Range Strike Systems
Who should attend?
- Program Managers
- Directors, Program Measurement and Management
- Acquisition Managers
- Systems Engineers
- Affordability Engineers
- Design Engineers
- Chief Engineers
- Development Program Engineers
- Supplier Program Managers
