Another Vendor has Been Shut Down - Mitigating Supplier and Material Shortages

摘要

Government contracts contain requirements to address obsolescence, parts management, limited manufacturing sources and critical material shortages that can impact fielding and maintaining weapons systems and support equipment. This is commonly known as Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages (DMSMS). Despite proactive mitigation steps, larger corporations merging, acquiring subcontractors and longtime vendors. Subsequently when products and sources are “not meeting the numbers”, their operations are downsized or shut down leaving space system manufacturers scrambling to recover from this eliminated (diminishing) source. Other supply chain issues occur when specific specialty materials or general material shortages put projects in jeopardy. The result is that the project begins to falter driving the performance measurement baseline (PMB) into the red. This is particularly common of space and their ground systems due to the long development cycles and service lives that require them to perform flawlessly for many years. The aerospace industry continues to consolidate driving unplanned DMSMS issues to occur more frequently. The impact is that space system manufacturers are burdened with unexpected redesigns, obsolescence management and performing lifetime buys of products to ensure availability. The result is additional program cost and schedule growth to Government agencies. Without proactive DMSMS planning, program consequences can be significant cost and schedule growth leading to Nunn-McCurdy Breaches. This paper provides a perspective of how Government and contractors, can use resources such as SD-22 “A Guidebook of Best Practices for Implementing a Robust DMSMS Management Program”, DMSMS Cost metrics SR Case #15-S-1196 from 2015, Mil-STD-3018 “Parts Management” and other resources during program planning and execution to minimize program impacts to technical performance, cost and schedules. Then when unexpected DMSMS events occur, they can have contingency plans ready for recovery. The aforementioned cost metrics report provides nine categories and six application areas with ground and space comprising almost 35% of the effort. We can use this information to show how the DMSMS planning framework helps maintain an executable PMB during the program.