People Taking Responsibility and Working Together to Provide a Customer-Focused Acquisition Process

OBJECTIVES

Significantly reduce acquisition cycle times for purchase orders and contracts, while reducing transaction costs and maintaining quality.

ALIGNMENT

This initiative is aligned with the Laboratory strategy and change goals to adopt best business practices and serve customer needs faster and more economically.

RESPONSIVENESS

The Laboratory has committed to carrying out missions faster and at a lower cost, and our internal customers are counting on our continued improvements in acquisition cycle times and reductions in the cost of acquisition support.

TACTICS

The Acquisition Division will continue to add commodities to the Just-In-Time system list; implement purchase card use, as appropriate; work with the Logistics and Material Services Section and the Accounting Section for further automation of the end-to-end process; increase the number of Electronic Data Interchange purchases; and decrease the number of active suppliers.

METRICS

* Compare actual average cycle times to targets.

* Track transaction costs as a ratio of cost of acquisition operations divided by cost of goods and services procured.

* Survey customers annually to assess their satisfaction with improvements.