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Advance Acquisition Planning
Mason and Hanger - Silas Mason Company, Inc., Pantex Plant, has developed and implemented an advance acquisition planning system that: (1) coordinates and integrates all plant functions involved in an acquisition; (2) disseminates standard lead times for purchases of various types and dollar value to be used in the planning process; (3) advises requisitioners of the essential steps involved in the procurement cycle and the responsibilities of personnel involved; (4) properly plans and schedules the initiation of procurement activities in advance to meet program needs; (5) allows strategic consolidation of known procurements of same or similar categories under a single contract; (6) monitors procurement activities and provides a means for updating the scheduling of procurement actions as changes in requirements occur; and (7) measures procurement performance in comparison to planned activities.
The program utilizes the Microsoft Project business project planning system. Microsoft Project provides project management tools in the form of graphical screen displays called views. These views have been customized to define the procurement tasks and their relationships. In order to communicate the procurement tasks, relationships, relative duration, and resources required to support a task, Procurement Cycle Models (PCMs) were developed and presented in a matrix format based on the type of requirement and the estimated cost of the requirement. All personnel can access these models as "read-only;" however, the plan can be downloaded into the overall project plan. These models are on the local area network and have a designated icon on Desktop that associates it with advance acquisition planning. These PCMs provide a planning tool for use by requisitioners in planning all procurements from the initial planning stage to contract award. The PCM is intended to help the requisitioner understand the different elements of the procurement cycle during the processing of a requisition. A task description is provided for each task that provides a detailed definition and the description of the task and the applicable plant standard(s) and/or internal operating procedure(s) which prescribe the requirement.
For major procurements of supplies/services and those which have economic or performance schedule impact on vital programs or projects, a detailed Procurement Plan is developed by Procurement with the assistance and coordination of the Project Representative. Once the Procurement Plan is devised that specifies who will do what and when, a project number is assigned and activities are tracked and monitored in Microsoft Project. The plan contains the original set of start and finish dates calculated for each task so that requisitioners and procurement personnel can monitor progress or slippage by comparing the plan to the current schedule. As work or tasks are completed, information showing what has actually occurred in the project is recorded by Procurement. Access to the specific Procurement Plan in Microsoft Project allows requisitioners to monitor their project once underway.
Features of the Microsoft Project software and its application for advance acquisition planning are: (1) Critical Path Method (CPM) which calculates the total duration of a project based on individual task durations and dependencies, and identifies which tasks are critical so that procurement strategies for reducing the duration of the critical path can be implemented with the focus on task duration; (2) Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) chart which shows the relationships between tasks, one task at a time and displays only the immediate predecessor and successor for the selected task; (3) Gantt Chart which provides a graphic view of the project schedule consisting of a table that lists information about each task and a bar chart displayed on a timescale to show task durations and start and finish dates so that you can compare planned, actual and scheduled start and finish dates and percentages of completion; and (4) Task Sheet which displays information about each task in the project in a series of columns and rows that provides a convenient format for entering, modifying, sorting, or filtering task information.
The advance acquisition planning program promotes: (1) communication between Procurement and plant customers by developing an acquisition schedule early in the procurement process; (2) higher quality procurements that will result in optimum choices of sources; and (3) greater understanding of constraints and opportunities inherent in each procurement. In addition, the PCMs provide a checklist for training of new Procurement personnel.
(Contact: J. Brian Bidwell, (806) 477-3856) |
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