Sustaining the Military Enterprise: An Architecture for a Lean Transformation

Dennis F.X. Mathaisel, Babson College, Babson Park, Massachusetts, USA

Taylor & Francis Group

CRC Press

Auerbach Publications

ISBN: 9781420062243

Providing both engineering and management views to sustainment, Sustaining the Military Enterprise focuses on the tools that management, product development, and operational support teams must consider in the design, development, operation, and improvement of products that are cost-effective in all phases of the life cycle. This book describes a Lean Enterprise Architecture strategy to transform the military maintenance, repair, and overhaul industrial enterprise. Integrating new systems engineering principles with proven commercial management practices, the text demonstrates how to minimize non-value-added activities throughout the entire military sustainment enterprise.

§ Analyzes the military sustainment enterprise and provides the strategies, principles, and technologies necessary to transform and sustain the military and the weapon systems it develops and utilizes

§ Provides the tools that management, product development, and operational support teams need to consider in the design, development, operation, and improvement of their products

§ Explains how process improvement initiatives and best-practices minimize waste while maximizing the usefulness of each process

§ Provides the necessary documents and tools on an accompanying CD-ROM to guide the enterprise through the LEA transformation activities

The U.S. government mandates that all Department of Defense logistic-wide initiatives adopt commercially proven practices and strategies to undergo maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) transformations.  Reasons for the drastic order include aging weapons systems, an aging workforce, limited financial resources, and new technologies, just to name a few. In order to execute this radical directive, transformation offices have been established to implement these new strategies.  However, these offices have no condensed, user-oriented context to refer to when implementing these new strategies.

Sustaining the Military Enterprise describes a Lean Enterprise Architecture (LEA) strategy to transform sustainment processes. It incorporates the management and technical skills necessary to design and implement cost effective, integrated, sustainment networks and agile organizational structures. The application of LEA to military sustainment initiatives will lead to less resource intensive and less organizationally disruptive practices than seen in traditional Lean enterprise transformation methods.

The book is organized into six chapters, which focus on three major subject categories. Topics include management techniques for transforming the military sustainment enterprise, improving the enterprise, process improvement initiatives and benchmarking best practices, and activities for enterprise transformation. The text also provides an assessment and description of the current military sustainment system and a guide to the LEA transformation. Through an intensive examination of new technologies, tools, and strategies, the author provides a means for military sustainment initiatives to achieve a successful transformation.