Problem_Statement

I. PROBLEM STATEMENT A. Current State: Tracking the status of open actions is not being performed uniformly between the Joint Armaments Center (JAC) and its customer (ARDEC). B. Impact Statement: As a result, the Center Director, Group Managers, Specialists, and management from ARDEC can spend anywhere from 6-8 hours in monthly status meetings going over open actions. C. Desired Goal: The desired goal is to track the status of open actions uniformly between the JAC and ARDEC by December 2010, cutting back monthly status meetings to 1-2 hours. II. DISCUSSION A. BACKGROUND As a Contract Specialist, we were always told that we had to keep track of our open actions and keep our milestones up to date. Each specialist has their own way of keeping track of their actions and the center as a whole has data warehouse. It wasn’t until 3 years ago when ARDEC started to want a month to month update from specialists on actions that were considered CORE and CONGRESSIONAL. A week before a status meeting, ARDEC sends down the spreadsheets that have their information on what they think is an open action and what milestone the specialist has reached. These spreadsheets are pages and pages long, with several different headings and categories on how they group and name these actions. Most of the time the headings and categories do not match or even come close to the name of the action the specialist is working on. The status meetings become a guessing game to match up the specialist open actions with ARDEC open actions. By the end of the meetings, a majority of the actions have been deciphered and updated, with a select few still unknown.