The Defense Logistics Agency Outbound Military Interdepartmental Purchase Request Process Improvement Team has been awarded the American Society of Military Comptrollers Washington Chapter Large Team Award.
Led by Robert Snider, lead for DLA’s MIPR program management office, the team comprised members from all key DLA business areas. They redesigned the entire DLA MIPR process, which directly impacts all of DLA and its Department of Defense and federal government customers. The redesign was implemented in less than four months and prevented a negative payable status for DLA.
In a buy/sell transaction, a negative payable status means that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service has made payment to the seller before DLA has confirmed receipt of the items, said Snider.
“Normally, across the DoD and the federal government for any buy/sell transaction, the buyer will first say, ‘Yes, I got it, and it's what I ordered’ before payment is made,” Snider said.
But prior to the team’s redesign, the majority of DLA’s annual intra-governmental outbound orders were getting paid before receipt was certified, Snider said.
The team’s efforts were initially prompted by audit readiness walkthroughs and have resulted in a completely reengineered, standardized and auditable process across the DLA Enterprise. The redesign will save the agency an estimated $13.5 million.