Establishing Best Practices in Logistics within Naval Aviation Enterprise: A Qualitative Case Stud

Department of Defense executives are continually looking for new toolsets in use within defense acquisition. Little information is present on the effectiveness and quality of these tools to compile best practices to relay across all services beneficial methods of procuring new weapon systems, or methods to cost effectively support deployed systems. U.S. Government budget constraints have demanded organizations establish better buying power of materials and resources to meet Secretary of Defense mandated levels of readiness. The purpose of research is to identify and evaluate effective practices within the Naval Aviation (NAVAIR) Program Offices. From this purpose, a common toolset of best practices associated with acquisition will be compiled. The research method is a qualitative case study to determine the effectiveness of toolsets currently being executed within the Naval Aviation Systems Command organizations that are enabling cost effective readiness in a fiscally constrained environment. The participants of the study are the Program executives and Level One Logistics executives that focus on supporting weapon systems in the most cost effective manner. Results of the study determined better collaboration both within NAVAIR and with external contractors needs improvement to better sustain and reduce the current readiness gap within naval aviation. In part a more robust defense acquisition workforce is necessary, as well as having better understanding of the tools used. A team effort in standardizing processes throughout organizations would help enable better contracting through learning from past mistakes and leveraging more timely data to make proactive decisions.