Richmond, Va –
The annual Senior Executive Partnership Roundtable was held at the Frank B. Lotts Conference Center on Defense Supply Center Richmond, Virginia, May 9. The SEPRT gathers senior executives from the agency’s strategic supplier alliances to meet with the Defense Logistics Agency leadership and military customer senior leaders to discuss general issues affecting DLA Aviation suppliers.
DLA Aviation Commander Air Force Brig. Gen. Linda Hurry hosted the roundtable event and welcomed attendees, which included DLA Director Army Lt. Gen. Darrell Williams; Air Force Brig. Gen. Christopher Hill, commander, Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex, Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma; and Seth Burke, deputy program executive officer for Tactical Aircraft Programs, Naval Air Station, Patuxent River, Maryland.
Industry partners from all sixteen of Aviation’s strategic supplier alliances also attended the one-day event.
Hurry said the SEPRT is a great opportunity to share information, look for new ways to innovate, improve on processes already in place and set some targets to help ensure support to the warfighter is more efficient and effective.
Our best strength comes from the partnerships, relationships, and innovation that comes from the amazing team in this room, she said.
The SEPRT agenda for the day included discussions on providing support in an aging aircraft world, reviewing the results of a first-time ever supplier survey, Aviation customer perspectives, and an Aviation business overview that also addressed tactical challenges.
Another area of discussion was the progression towards meeting the Secretary of Defense’s goal of having 80% mission capable rates for the F-16, F/A-18, F-22, and F-35 weapon systems. Through the great partnerships between the services, DLA Aviation and industry, mission capable rates have increased across all of these platforms since February. However, there’s still room for improvement across all parties to bridge the gap to meet the overall MC80 goal.
Hurry also talked about how overall Aviation supply chain material availability increased two percentage points from April 2018 to April 2019, going from 86.70% to 88.70%, while the number of backorders during this same timeframe decreased to 147,858, down from 149,081.
Hurry said while these numbers speak to the hard work and dedication put forth by DLA Aviation and industry, she acknowledged there is still much work to done.
“I’m going to ask for your help. We need your innovations. We need all the great ideas from all of your teams out there to help us drive readiness,” she said.