Evaluation of Measurements Used to Drive Competitiveness in a Depot MaintenanceEnvironment

摘要

This thesis acknowledges that Air Force Materiel Command maintenance depots willface increased competition for workload, especially exchangeable items, both from other Service depots and from civilian contractors. The authors, through the literature review, identify quality, delivery, and cost as the three primary competitive edges firms can use to gain advantage in the marketplace. Further, a recent study confirms that Air Force depot managers also consider these three factors of competitiveness to be most important. The authors tested two depot measurement system, the Defense Depot Performance Measurement System (DDPMS) and measurements based on the Theory of Constraints (TOC) . During personal interviews, ten depot managers were asked a series of questions designed to discover whether they understood the constituent measures of the two systems and whether they found the measures useful for competing with respect to quality, delivery, and cost. The authors analyzed the managers responses to the questions and found that neither measurement system related well to the three competitive edges. Also, according to the managers, neither measurement system, as a whole, was driving depot performance. A new measurement system combining measures from DDPMS and TOC with other measures was recommended....