RICHMOND, Va. –
Defense Logistics Agency employees from four major subordinate commands shared ideas and capabilities for automating manual processes with software robotics during a Multi-MSC Robotic Process Automation Collaboration Workshop Jan. 22-23 at DLA Aviation.
The Multi-MSC RPA Collaboration Workshop gave attendees the opportunity to discuss ideas and share existing automation capabilities, according to Nicole Byrd, a program analyst for DLA Enterprise Capabilities (J62B) RPA at DLA Information Operations and workshop facilitator.
Fifty-six employees from DLA Aviation, Energy, Troop Support, and Land and Maritime’s Business Process Support and Procurement Process Support Directorates participated, both virtually, and in person. Attendees included a mixture of DLA RPA analysts and developers, data analysts, business process analysts, DLA Information Operations’ RPA team, supply chain analysts, and other representatives.
RPA technology simulates repetitive human actions following specific workflow business processes, according to Byrd. Actions processed through this technology are rule-based, requiring no decision-making. RPA software robots complete processes faster, work 24/7, create audit records and reduce errors significantly. The program provides DLA an annual cost avoidance of approximately $40 million in manual labor hours.
“The manual labor hours avoided through the RPA program add to the manual hours available to work complicated, decision-making tasks to enable DLA’s ability to accomplish the overall mission of supporting the warfighter,” Byrd said.
In 2018, DLA became the first federal organization to develop unattended bots which execute tasks and interact with systems without human involvement, according to an article by Jiwon Han, division chief of Research, Review and Analysis Division in DLA Land and Maritime’s Business Process Support Directorate.
Land and Maritime, the military’s largest supplier of spare parts that support land-based and maritime weapons systems, uses RPA to auto-close informational Supply Discrepancy Reports and distribute Special Emergency Procurement Authority National Item Identification Number files.
“We are using RPAs to streamline and automate repeatable manual processes to make things more efficient,” Han said.
Land and Maritime also plans to automate the assignment of Supply Assistance Requests to humans.
“With the 3,000-plus Supply Assistance Requests received per month by DLA Land and Maritime Customer Operations personnel, each of these requires a manual action to assign the request to a user to be worked,” said Jeffrey Sherrod, a DLA Land and Maritime supply systems analyst. “Being able to leverage a digital worker to conduct these assignments will save a significant amount of time that can be repurposed for value-added work, allowing the customer-facing personnel to enhance their warfighter support in working the requests.”
Dawn Wynn, division chief of E-Procurement Division for DLA Energy’s Procurement Process Support Directorate, said her division has designed RPAs for processes such as solicitation price updates, earmarked funds status adjustments and email distribution and notifications management to vendor-facing applications like DLA’s Internet Bid Board System. She said they will continue to explore other areas where RPA functionality can be utilized.
Wynn said she enjoyed hearing about the ways the other MSCs were utilizing automation in procurement processes.
“The workshop was a great opportunity for my team to share ideas and collaborate with key partners across other MSCs to gain knowledge about how their teams have designed and implemented automation to mitigate issues they have encountered with various procurement processes,” Wynn said. “I also appreciated opportunities being extended to those new to RPA to participate in future advanced training sessions to build knowledge on RPA design techniques.”
Han said she found the workshop helpful for relationship-building.
“The most beneficial thing I got out of the workshop is the collaboration with the other MSCs and being able to form relationships with key players,” said Han.