The application of advanced technology in group decision-making and consensus-building in the military acquisition process.

摘要

The defense acquisition system is a single, uniform process whereby all equipment, facilities, and services are planned, developed, acquired, maintained, and disposed of by the Department of Defense. Under recent governmental reforms, the role and scope of the acquisition community is to collect and manage information from a wide array of R&D organizations including manufacturers, laboratories, system users, and the public. Within those organizations, scientists, engineers, managers, and business and financial managers operate with their own unique cultures and often their own languages, vastly complicating the acquisition process. With the cost and complexity of military systems rising, Program Managers (PMs) must have access to complete and accurate data from all parties, including personal opinions, that may not be expressed in an open forum.; The Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, a University Affiliated Research Center, is a non-profit research and development organization dedicated to the evaluation government programs in the role of "honest broker." Since 1981, APL has been conducting interactive seminar sessions called Warfare Analysis Laboratory Exercises (WALEXs) to bring the several disparate elements of the acquisition community together to discuss, report, and evaluate R&D programs. This study looked at whether the WALEX process and its tools have resulted in improved interaction between members of the community to benefit efficiency of the process and quality of the products.; Pre- and post-WALEX questionnaires from numerous sessions were analyzed. Results indicated that the participants believed that the WALEX process improved group interaction and decision-making, thereby providing the PM, a truer, more comprehensive set of inputs to make difficult decisions on complex systems.