LESSONS LEARNED COMMERCIAL BEST PRACTICES AND THE DOD ACQUISITION PROCESS

Continuous improvement continues to be the rallying point for Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition reform. The recent changes to the DoD 5000 show that the department is streamlining the acquisition process to meet the realities of the evolving “new world ” threats. As dramatic as the changes have been, there is room for improvement. Here we compare the streamlined DoD acquisition process with the process used in the American automobile industry—which continually deals with an ever-evolving threat. We discuss the Chrysler Corporation product development process and identify the “best practices ” in their product development process. These best practices can be applied to the DoD acquisition process.1 he basic tenets of the current Depart-ment of Defense (DoD) acquisition reform are “better, faster, cheaper.” The acquisition reforms have resulted in a new DoD 5000 rule which dictates what should be performed during a major sys-tem acquisition, not how to perform one. Using the new 5000, the systems devel-oped should be: 1. Better. A high-quality system must be designed and built right the first time. 2. Cheaper. The costs of developing, building, fielding, and maintaining the system are constrained more so than in the past. 3. Faster. The streamlined process re-duces the amount of time required to acquire and properly field sys-tems. The idea of DoD acquisition reform is not new. Since the DoD 5000 was first is-sued in 1971, there have been nine revi-sions in an effort to streamline and fine tune the DoD acquisition proces