AFICA hosts 2017 Enterprise Sourcing Summit at AFIT

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio – Over 100 professionals from organizations around the world gathered for the Air Force Installation Contracting Agency’s 2017 Enterprise Sourcing Summit June 7-8 at the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Bane Auditorium. Attendees included representatives from the operational contracting, small business, civil engineering, and acquisition communities, to name a few.

“We invited folks from across the Air Force to be disruptive thinkers with us in figuring out how we can implement AFICA’s tool sets and thought processes starting from category management and Air Force-wide solutions all the way down to local enterprise sourcing solutions that each individual base can use,” said Brig. Gen. Cameron Holt, AFICA commander.

“We then encourage them to put that savings they garner into our cost savings tracker so that we can then feed that information back up to senior leaders to show them the benefit of reducing what the operations of the Air Force cost,” he said.

Holt indicated that one goal of the summit was to work toward AFICA’s goal of saving $1 billion over five years. The AFICA cost savings tracker allows contracting personnel to input rate, process and demand-driven savings they’ve achieved at any level of enterprise sourcing. Currently, the cost savings tracker reflects documented savings across the Air Force enterprise of more than $500 million.

“In two years, we are more than half-way toward meeting that goal in validated savings. Our ultimate objective is to lower the cost of operations with no capability loss so we can reinvest those dollars into war-winning capabilities the Air Force needs,” Holt said.

One of the summit’s agenda items was how AFICA is being innovative with its Air Force-wide approach to enterprise sourcing through the federally mandated concept known as Category Management. In anticipation of an official Air Force decision to be made regarding the implementation of Category Management, in accordance with the Office of Management and Budget requirement, AFICA is spearheading a proposal of how to implement Category Management within the Air Force.

Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, commander of Air Force Materiel Command, spoke to those in attendance and praised the ongoing effort to provide cost-effective and agile acquisition support to the Air Force.

“What the enterprise sourcing construct did for us was to give us a framework to build on what we were trying to do with putting across the agile combat support enterprise a way to cost-effectively provide the services that the Air Force needs to be able to go to war tonight and to be able to continue to sustain that in a resource-constrained environment,” Pawlikowski said.

“AFMC is the cost conscience of the Air Force, and I take that very seriously, I don’t know how I can do that without Enterprise Sourcing…Enterprise Sourcing is the critical enabler in putting the ‘A’ in agility when it comes to the mission,” said Pawlikowski.

Holt noted AFICA is leading not only how the Air Force conducts sourcing across the enterprise, but a larger cultural change.

“It is not just about enterprise-wide solutions at the Air Force level. It’s also about making sure that everybody is thinking about strategic cost management, not just Air Force-wide, but regionally and locally as well,” said Holt.

In fact, the AFICA Category Management team was presented the 2017 Acquisition Team Excellence Award for Category Management June 13 during a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The award was presented by the Chief of Acquisition Officers Council for those who have demonstrated excellence and success in category management.