Industry Interview: SAIC

MLF 2011 Volume: 5 Issue: 10 (November/December)

  

Mike McGovern is vice president for business development in SAIC’s logistics and engineering solutions business unit and the company’s account manager for the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). He has 25 years of aerospace and defense business development, sales, marketing, customer service, account management and operations experience.

Q: Please provide some background on SAIC and the company’s work with DoD in the logistics arena.

A: As our company description states, SAIC is a Fortune 500 scientific, engineering and technology applications company that uses its deep domain knowledge to solve problems of vital importance to the nation and the world in national security, energy and environment, health and cybersecurity.

Our logistics, readiness and sustainment [LR&S] business is a robust, diverse growth area of the enterprise. We provide our DoD customers with products and services that range from operational logistics for the mine resistant ambush protected family of vehicles, to supply chain integration services for numerous product commodities, to logistics information technology development and sustainment.

Q: How is SAIC ready to meet the challenging DoD budgetary times that are ahead?

A: As we all know, for the forseeable future DoD will be challenged to significantly reduce costs while maintaining effective support to our warfighters. Industry will need to be on the same page with government for this effort to succeed. SAIC’s LR&S business, and for that matter the entire SAIC enterprise, is keenly focused on providing innovative solutions that reduce costs and improve efficiencies.

An overarching objective of SAIC LR&S is to provide affordable readiness and operational availability at the lowest life cycle cost.

Whether it’s for logistics support of the ammunition supply point in theater, or supply and delivery of chemicals, packaged petroleum, oil and lubricants to thousands of DoD and foreign military sales [FMS] customers, we’re using integrated technology to reduce costs and improve our performance and our client’s. For example, our proprietary IT tools provide our logisticians and customers with total asset visibility throughout the asset life cycle—resulting in improved situational awareness, better decision-making ability and optimized stock positions. We continue to invest heavily in modernizing our enabling technology.

We also strongly believe in partnering both formally and informally with government and industry teamates. This can be accomplished through public-private partnerships where government organizations are performing key elements of an SAIC product support offering, or collaborative demand planning where we work together with defense depots to better understand operational and maintenance trends—thus improving forecasting accuracy and our ability to stock the right products in inventory to meet ever-changing warfighter demand.

Q: What are some of the new programs you are working on in partnership with DoD, agencies and the military services?

A: We’re excited to begin work on the $1.2 billion DLA Tires Successor Initiative [TSI] and proud of the continued confidence DLA has shown in SAIC with this recent contract award. The program’s scope is complex and calls for supply chain management of military land and aircraft tires—to include forecasting, procurement, inventory management and worldwide distribution directly to DoD and FMS end-users. TSI program responsibilities also include managing the supply of aircraft tire retreads, scrap pick-up, recycling and disposal and the Air Force’s tire life cycle cost program.

We’re confident that TSI will allow DLA and DLA’s customers to capitalize on the latest commerical supply chain management technologies and business practices, which will translate into improved customer support at the lowest possible cost. As we implement this new program, we will be leveraging existing infrastructure built to support more than 20 similar, active DoD supply chain management programs—including use of experienced supply and logistics professionals with domain expertise, existing global warehouses, in-place inventory and use of proven technology solutions.

Q: How has SAIC positioned itself and prepared for 2012?

A: As we look to 2012 and beyond, SAIC continues to focus on integrating technical capabilities from across the enterprise to meet our customers’ increasingly complex logistics needs. With the budgetary constraints DoD is facing, application of innovation in equipment modernization and sustainment are a must. To this end, we’re threading capabilities such as training, modeling, maintenance and cybersecurity into our core logistics offering. The result is a comprehensive contractor logistics support solution built to meet the requirements of military logistics customers in ground, air and maritime domains.

Q: What are some of the main challenges you are facing in meeting the needs of the 21st-century warfighter?

A: There is so much attention on the cost side of the equation right now, and rightfully so. However, our collective efforts to reduce costs can in no way impact readiness or quality. SAIC is incredibly proud of our support to the warfighter and recognizes that our logistics support directly impacts the troops.

We help to save soldiers’ lives by fielding and supporting MRAPs in Iraq and Afghanistan; we upgrade air traffic control and landing systems to provide more reliable and safe means to guide military aircraft to airfields; we keep weapon systems operational by providing thousands of unique replacement parts, delivered on-time, around the globe. Moving forward, we need to maintain the proper balance and retain our focus on the customer mission and the warfighter’s needs. ♦

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