Weapon system design, test, and production constitute the world’s most complicated technical process.

Most new weapon systems waste operators’ time and taxpayers’ money with excessive maintenance and logistics support, while reducing the readiness of our Nation’s defenses. This says that project managers, and the hierarchy of management above them, clear to the top - government and contractor alike - don’t understand and properly manage the technical process of weapon system procurement.

If you’re a project manger, no doubt you disagree. You have been taught to believe that by following government and corporate project administration policy to the letter, your project will succeed and you will be a hero.

The sad truth is that you may be right, because that policy measures success in terms of "on time and within budget" rather than performance in service. The existing material acquisition process focuses on administrative issues: cost and schedule. Its milestone decision points are unrelated to the industrial processes and the transition between development and production in the factory. It does not account for, and has no method of evaluating, technical risk at these milestones. Concurrency is looked upon unfavorably. Insufficient funding early in design allows programs to proceed beyond the point of affordable action to correct shortfalls.

You’re in Trouble and Don’t Know it

Congressional actions, new DoD policies, and public opinion are beginning to demand performance in service, yet government and corporate policies don’t help you to get there from here.

So if you are managing your project in the "good old time-tested, business as usual" way, your project is headed for disaster. It may take you with it.

Most acquisition mangers seem to recognize that there is a risk associated with the transition from development to production, but perhaps do not know the magnitude or the origin, because the transition is not a discrete event but a process composed of three elements: design, test, and production. Many programs simply cannot succeed in production despite the fact that they’ve passed the required milestone review. These programs can’t succeed for technical reasons, not withstanding what is perceived as prior management success related to DoD acquisition policy. A poorly designed product cannot be properly tested or produced. In the test program, there will be far more failures than should be expected. Manufacturing problems will overwhelm production schedules and costs. The best evidence of this is the "hidden factory syndrome" with its needlessly high redesign/rework costs.

The Industrial Processes of Design, Test, and Production are Poorly Understood

The industrial processes of design, test, and production are poorly understood both by the government, which contracts for them, and by industry as a whole, which developed them. That is, some contractors are knowledgeable in, and make good use of, certain processes, but no contractor chooses to use them all. As a result, various technical issues in design, test, or production degrade performance and readiness in service, not the management issues.

Performance and readiness in service don’t improve except by retrofit – clearly, problems are predestined before the product leaves the factory. These problems, at levels of technical detail not normally visible to project managers, are eliminated only when the product is changed. They usually come as surprises to the project manager- government or contractor - who has focused on administration and has accepted the reassurances of his staff without understanding the technical issues and their consequences.

Government and contractor project managers sincerely want to do a good job - all that’s needed are proper tools. DoD Directive 4245.7 dated 19 January 1984, in its TRANSITION DOCUMENT "Transition from Development to Production," defines the proper tools, or "templates." The topics they address constitute the "critical path" for a successful material acquisition program. To ignore any one of them would be foolhardy. This is not inconsistent with project management policy - the project manager should have enough familiarity with the technical issues in the industrial processes of design, test, and production to manage them as closely as the administrative issues.

There are two approaches to the material acquisition process. The current approach is defined in DoD 5000-series documents and dutifully implemented by project managers. These documents and the requirements that they spell out are important in that they establish a management grid which the various participants in the acquisition process must follow. But they don’t describe the industrial process, nor do they provide intelligence on the management and control of those technical activities and their related details that can either make or break a project. What has evolved as today’s acquisition strategy hardly recognizes the importance of development and production, much less utilizes the vast resources of development and production data in any decision process.

Current DoD systems acquisition policies don’t account for the fact that systems acquisition is concerned basically and primarily with an industrial process. Its structure, organization, and operation bear no similarity whatsoever to the systems acquisition process as it is conventionally described. It is a technical process focused on the design, test, and production of a product. It will either fail or falter if these processes are not performed in a disciplined manner, because the design, test, and production processes are a continuum of interrelated and interdependent disciplines. A failure to perform well in one area will result in failure to do well in all areas. When this happens - as it does all too often - a high-risk program results whose equipment is fielded late and at far greater cost than planned.

Among the characteristics of the current approach are the following:

• Control of acquisition strategy by Congress, not the project manager
• Blind reliance on military standards and specifications
• Focus on cost and schedule to support management decisions
• Management by milestone-driven administrative process
• Little or no technical assessment factored into management decisions
• Ignorance of the industrial processes of design, test and production

The alternative approach requires that project managers understand the technical and industrial processes involved, in terms of proven best practices. They manger, report, and base their project decisions on the technical progress of their projects to the same degree as the administrative. It requires them to understand the consequences of the current approach, in relation to the industrial processes involved, in order to manage their project to ensure successful performance in service in spite of current DoD acquisition policy.

DoD 4245.7-M associated with DoD Directive 4245.7 provides an overview of the critical path templates. These areas of risk may not be very convincing, particularly to first-time project managers. In its abbreviated form, DoD 4245.7-M isn’t able to convey enough to the program manager and the contractor to understand the consequences of current approaches and the benefits of best practices. The program manager must have no doubt where he was erred, and how he can recover. Something needs to make clear what must be done to reduce the technical risk in a material acquisition program and to ensure performance in service with confidence.

This book does that. It is intended for program mangers and their superiors, both government and contractor. This management level is usually concerned with the administrative process - cost and schedule - and is frequently ill-prepared to manage the technical process, depending instead on staff assistance for the technical details. In today’s material acquisition environment, in which even the Congress is showing concern for technical risk, this is an unsatisfactory situation. Management will be held accountable for striking a balance between administrative and technical risk in every program decision, and a general understanding of the technical disciplines becomes an essential requirement.

This aid identifies the proper requirements for requests for proposals and contracts. It is a road map through the industrial processes involved in the full-scale development and production phases of a program, supporting program reviews and formal design reviews.

Although written at a technical policy level for maximum value to program management, it also contains data and information applicable to the design and production engineering functions, as well as engineering support organizations such as reliability engineering. It should therefore be required reading for everyone associated with the technical issues of defense systems acquisition, and should be understood by those responsible for the current administrative processes as well.

Each template in DoD 4245.7-M is addressed in this manual. For each template, certain elements are currently being approached in a manner which emphasizes the administrative process and disregards best practices utilizing the disciplined technical process - a manner which results in high risk. This manual refers to these approaches, standard ways of doing business in today’s defense systems acquisition environment, as "traps" since they represent potential danger to program success. Although traps may not appear to be inherently dangerous, they become problems when they are sprung. There are indicators, or "alarms," both subtle and obvious, which alert the project manager to the fact that he is caught. On the other hand, the dangers of a trap can be avoided if he knows how to "escape." The project manager will immediately relate to the traps discussed in this manual because with few exceptions he will find them in his project.

Four traps have been identified for each template. Though many more could be identified, these four are deemed the most significant. If a project manager avoids these through best practices, his project risk will be reduced to acceptable limits insofar as that template is concerned. Each trap has technical characteristics which would indicate that the danger has not been avoided - that the project has sprung a trap. These are the alarms, encountered too often in our current approach to defense systems acquisition. They contribute directly to unacceptable project risk, and their existence is evidence that the trap is having a negative effect on the project. The consequences of being caught in the trap are predictable from the experience of many projects and from the application of common sense.

The best approach to material acquisition is the use of best practices from the beginning, through careful attention to the system specification and the contract, and effective management of the technical process during design, test, and production. The more likely situation finds the project loaded with traps. The earlier they are escaped, the greater likelihood of successful performance in service.

The impact of escapes on cost and schedule vary from one trap to the next. The best practice in one instance may cost more, while in another instance the best practice is better use of resources, at a net cost saving. Increased cost in design or test may be offset in production as a result of lower reject rates and reduced rework, which will improve delivery schedules.

The benefits of avoiding or escaping traps in the material acquisition process are not necessarily the converse of the consequences of entrapment. For example, assigning production engineers to work directly with design engineers at the beginning of the design process helps to avoid redesign for producibility after production start, as well as high rework levels (the hidden factory). At the same time, however, the design may take advantage of new production technology which has the potential of significantly improving performance. Best practices will always improve performance in service, and will do so at reduced life cycle cost.