Navy Supply Chain Management

Naval Material Supply Chain Management (SCM) is NAVSUP's largest portfolio in terms of resources invested with over 3,000 civilian, military and contractor personnel involved, $50.1 billion of inventory on hand and an annual material budget of over $7.2 billion. It covers the over 340,000 class IX repair part line items of supply for which NAVSUP Weapon Systems Support (NAVSUP WSS) is responsible. NAVSUP WSS uses funds from the Navy Working Capital Fund (NWCF) to buy and repair the parts and in turn sells them to Fleet customers. In a nutshell, Naval SCM is the collection of processes that result in Navy customers receiving the parts they need, when and where they need them, anywhere in the world.

Description

In delivering Naval Material SCM, NAVSUP WSS has a dual focus, both on its more familiar Fleet Supply Support role, but also on its Program Support role, to provide support for the life cycle of the weapons system. The supply support role is more familiar because it is NAVSUP WSS's more visible customer-focused role... the planning and execution of material support on a daily basis. NAVSUP WSS’ program support role is less obvious to the customer… they don’t see the processes and outputs directly, but they are critical nonetheless to achieving weapon system readiness. Below are some of the major Fleet Supply Support and Program Support processes NAVSUP WSS performs to execute Naval Material SCM.

Fleet Supply Support

• Determine Requirements: Includes determining the actions necessary to satisfy customers' current needs for items and projecting out-year requirements for repair and procurement.
• Allocate Material: Includes the processes for managing assets, processing customer orders, and developing and managing repair workload.
• Manage Repairs: Includes identifying, scheduling and funding requirements.
• Contract for Repair Services: Includes contracting for material and services in support of requirements, in accordance with laws, regulations, policies, and procedures. The activities normally associated are procurement planning, solicitation of offers, the award of contracts, contractor surveillance and the management of active contracts.
• Develop Allowances: Includes developing and publishing allowances and load lists for normal and contingency operations. NAVSUP WSS computes retail aviation allowances using Readiness Based Sparing (RBS) for Weapon Replaceable Assemblies (WRAs) while other items are spared using demand-based techniques.
• Manage Financials: Includes planning and executing the NAVSUP WSS material budget, monitoring financial and budget indicators, developing adjustments and strategies, and conducts financial management of afloat units.
• Provide Customer Service: Includes serving as the POC for supply support concerns, including serving as a single face to the Fleet and industrial customers and suppliers for requirements and technical information and monitoring material movement, status, backorders and expediting.

Program Support

• Life Cycle Management: Includes cradle to grave support to hardware systems commands from initial production to ramp-up into declining systems and ultimately phase out to include decommissioning and disposal.
• Reliability Improvement: Includes developing and executing Logistics Engineering Change proposals (LECPs), which use the NWCF to buy improved systems that increase reliability for systems that are performing poorly or reaching obsolescence.
• Interim Support: Includes a subset of item introduction, supply and inventory management support for a new or modified weapon systems/equipment provided from Initial Operational Capability (IOC) date to Material Support Date (MSD).
• Security Assistance: Includes the complete logistics support Foreign Military Sales (FMS).
• Integrated Logistics: Includes support of the hardware systems commands to develop coordinated supply, maintenance, training, and transportation of Navy weapons systems.
• Maintenance Planning: Includes developing detailed data pertaining to the identification of maintenance and logistics support resources and requirements for weapons system, including the Master Repairables Item List (MRIL.)
• Deployable Capability: Includes planning, funding, partnering, and SCM to sustain ships and aircraft in worldwide operations.
• Configuration Management: Includes the technical and administrative direction and surveillance over the life cycle of items to: (1) Identify and document the functional and physical characteristics of configuration items; (2) control changes to configuration items and their related documentation; (3) record and report information needed to manage configuration items effectively, including the status of proposed changes and implementation status of approved changes; and (4) audit configuration items to verify conformance to specifications, drawings, and other contract requirements.

The vast majority of the Naval Material SCM effort is provided by NAVSUP WSS at its two Pennsylvania locations. The NAVSUP WSS Philadelphia site supports Naval aviation,  while the NAVSUP WSS Mechanicsburg site supports ships, submarines and nuclear propulsion.