Industry Interview: CSC Logistics Center of Excellence

INDUSTRY INTERVIEW



Daniel G. Brown
Vice President
CSC Logistics Center of Excellence

Daniel G. Brown (LTG, Ret.), serves as vice president of CSC’s Logistics Center of Excellence. He is responsible for supporting 11 business areas that generate logistics revenue of more than $900 million annually. He establishes go-to-market strategies and teaming arrangements; identifies service and solution applications; initiates collaboration across other CSC business areas; identifies and recommends potential acquisitions; and identifies and applies emerging technology.

Prior to CSC, Brown served 34 years in the U.S. Army where he culminated his career as a Lieutenant General. His last military assignment was as the deputy commander in Chief, United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM). He has extensive experience in joint service logistics operations and is generally recognized as one of military’s preeminent experts on force projection and distribution.

Q. Please provide a brief overview of CSC and its history.

A. The CSC story began in 1959 with two computer programmers named Fletcher Jones and Roy Nutt, one hundred dollars and a revolutionary vision.

Today, CSC is a leading IT services company. Our mission is to be a global leader in providing technology-enabled business solutions and services.

With approximately 91,000 employees, CSC provides innovative solutions for customers around the world by applying leading technologies and CSC’s own advanced capabilities. These include systems design and integration; IT and business process outsourcing; applications software development; Web and application hosting; and management consulting.

Q. What is CSC’s current military logistics program focus and how is it being achieved?

A. Our focus is clear. We’re a nation at war and to be relevant in the defense arena, we must contribute to the war effort in meaningful ways. That usually means delivering logistics solutions that improve readiness, add velocity to the deployment and distribution systems, or reduce resource requirements by cutting costs or manpower. Our expertise enables us to achieve all three. We believe that logistics systems must be integrated to form more agile and interoperable supply chains that improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. To this end, we synchronize supply, maintenance and transportation functions within a total enterprise framework. We also focus on providing executable information through collaborative data sharing.

Q. To what do you attribute your success in supporting the military customer? What sort of solutions do you offer?

A. We’ve achieved success for our military customers by emphasizing warfighter effectiveness, process orientation, integration, outcomes, committed leadership, and the right skilled people assigned to each engagement. Our solutions fall within five broad categories:

•      Supply Chain Consulting: Our worldwide consultants support commercial and federal markets from NASA and the U.S. Postal Service to logistic teams providing reconstruction and economic development services in Iraq. Our expertise includes training, focused studies using Lean Six Sigma techniques and supply chain assessments.
  
•      Enterprise Integration and Transformation: We’re supporting the DoD by providing two of the largest and most complex logistics transformations in the history of the DoD and the largest SAP logistics application in the world. These include the U.S. Army Logistics Modernization Program and the U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Combat Support System.
  
•      Distribution Management and Deployment Execution: As a strategic partner of the U.S. Transportation command [USTC], the distribution process owner [DPO], we help oversee DoD-wide distribution activities and ensure synchronized transportation, distribution and sustainment worldwide. CSC supports the DPO by providing tools, systems and processes that manage ports, force projection, contingency planning, portfolio management, enterprise architecture and many other functions.
  
•      Maintenance and Repair: As a result, our engineers and technicians have experience with more than 200 aircraft types and 75 engine types of varying ages that cover the spectrum from supersonic trainers to the space shuttle simulation aircraft.
  
•    Facility Management: CSC provides fullscale logistics services for base operations and weapons ranges that cut costs and increase overall operational efficiency for our customers who include the Army, Air Force and NASA.

Q. What are CSC’s core capabilities in the military logistics arena?

A. We are best known as an industry leader in systems integration, our expertise, however, extends far beyond that capability. Our strengths include a full spectrum of support services and large-scale logistic transformation solutions. With locations in 23 different countries, we’re able to infuse our defense work with our strong worldwide commercial expertise. Leveraging our experience across our global enterprise, we offer our military customers thought leadership and commercial best practices that improve both efficiency and effectiveness.

Q. What does CSC see as its biggest challenges in the defense logistics industry?

A. One of our key challenges is ensuring that DoD understands the breadth of our expertise in logistics services and solutions. ♦