CONCLUSION

It is clear that to be effective and efficient in the 21st century, the federal acquisition process must be structured to cope with increasing competition for scarce budget dollars, the need for flatter organizations, strategic alliances between suppliers, and an exponential growth in the area of electronic data interchange.

In recent years DoD has done much to improve its acquisition practices and policies through acquisition reform and to transform its logistics systems to integrated supply chains driven by modern information technologies and a wide range of best business practices that have been proven in the commercial sector.

To add value to the acquisition process, the contracting community must become more proactive and innovative. Procurement is much broader than the purchase of goods and services—it involves activities that take place in many functions. “Organizations exercise the best control over cost and quality of purchased goods and services only when appropriate members of the various departments involved in the procurement process operate as an interdependent, integrated system. When this happens, a synergism takes place, with the result that the integrated efforts become greater than the sum of the individual efforts.”

It is clear that the capabilities of EDI are not limited to the further automation of the existing acquisition process. EDI has eliminated distance as an inhibitor to communications, thus creating common databases that not only will enhance communications but also will link organizations and their processes together. Contractors with good performance track records, along with effective supply chains and manufacturing processes, will have an advantage over their competitors. This capability will reduce the average acquisition cycle time and lower the cost of ownership.

In Chapter 3 we will begin our focus on the acquisition process and how acquisition doctrine extrapolates lessons of the past to the acquisition environment of the future.