Sources Sought: Direct Materiel Delivery Visibility for Improved Supply Chain Efficiency
February 12, 2024
NCMS is assisting the Department of Defense in seeking industry partners who have the capability to provide the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) with a way to track (in near real-time) Customer Direct contracts, providing delivery of materiel from a supplier without passing through a government distribution point to evaluate required Time Definite Delivery (TDD) standards.
Background
As the nation’s combat logistics support agency, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) manages the end-to-end global defense supply chain – from raw materiel to end user disposition – for the five military services, 11 combatant commands, other federal, state and local agencies and partner and allied nations.
DLA’s mission is to “deliver readiness and lethality to the Warfighter Always and support our nation through quality, proactive global logistics.” To accomplish this mission, DLA has a staff of about 25,000 employees divided into multiple supply chains that contract for materiel and services across the military classes of supply: subsistence (food/water), clothing and textiles, bulk petroleum and other energy products, construction materiel and equipment, personal demand items, medical materiel and equipment, and repair parts for land, sea and air systems. (Defense Logistics Agency, 2024)
Shipping data is a critical component of any supply chain and drives business decisions at every level of DLA operations. There is a high degree of variability in shipping data visibility and significant need for comprehensive, consolidated data that incorporates various leading-edge inputs to the shipment process like shipping status, shipping reference, shipping date, and delivery confirmation. The ability to collect, automate, and integrate this data impacts DLA’s wholesale and retail customers and is essential to enabling an effective DLA supply chain.
DLA’s business involves a substantial amount of freight and small parcel shipments, generating a substantial amount of internal and external data, including tracking of in-transit shipment from shipping vendors for tracking, which means there are use cases and beneficiaries in nearly every part of DLA’s business. Improving availability of comprehensive shipping data for materiel that is shipping direct from the vendor to the point of need is required and must be leveraged to the maximum extent practicable. These critical assets are essential to Warfighter readiness and logistics operations.
Objectives
- Automate shipping data collection and integration into DLA’s various business systems without manual intervention (i.e., environment agnostic)
- Streamline data exchange and business transactions for materiel procured through Customer Direct contracts.
Submission Requirements
Interested parties should provide a White Paper response with NO MORE than FOUR (4) pages, not including a cover page, using the format below.
The White Paper must:
- Describe general approach to include phases to accomplish the objective
- Describe assumptions
- Detailed approach to the objective
- List of tasks
- List of deliverables
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- Must provide CTMA final report
- High level project schedule and timing
- Describe rough order of magnitude cost
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- A more detailed cost analysis will be expected later in the process
- A description of recent and relevant experience in accomplishing similar evaluations and using modeling and simulation tools and processes
- URLs to corporate presentations including engineering, modeling and simulation, prototyping, testing, and manufacturing capabilities.
Deadline
Responses are due to opportunities@ncms.org by COB 23 February 2024. The sources sought is solely for information and planning purposes.
Evaluation Criteria
Technical Feasibility. How technically feasible is the proposed solution, given the present state of the technology? Solutions with a lower technological risk profile are favored.
Responsiveness. How responsive is the proposed solution? Solutions responsive to the problem identified, without creating new problems, are favored.
Viability. How viable is the proposed solution, given existing organizational and regulatory environments? Solutions compatible with existing DLA, DoD, and federal policies, processes, and procedures are favored.
Desirability. How desirable is the proposed solution to the eventual end-user? Solutions easily adaptable, useful, and implementable are favored.
Funding. Does funding reasonably exist to fund the proposed solution? Solutions with lower prices are favored.