Industry Engagement Plan

Supplier Communication and Interaction

Frank and open communication is a foundational element of any strong partnership, and it has long been a tenet of DLA’s supplier relationship management efforts. DLA acquisition professionals and leaders are encouraged and expected to engage with and work collaboratively with industry in a fair and open manner.

DLA pledges to be responsive to supplier interactions at all levels of business and in various forums and settings, to include one-on-one discussions, industry site visits, industry association events, and DLA-led engagements. We will continue to leverage the industry associations to better understand and discuss current issues facing DLA and industry. In accordance with DLA’s strategic plan, we are expanding the scope of our strategic or mid-tier suppliers and building a tailored strategy for our transactional suppliers in order to better understand our industry partners and jointly improve performance and increase value for our customers.

Effective industry engagement is an enabler to achieving both successful acquisition outcomes and improving our military’s readiness and lethality.

Balancing Business Decisions and Fiduciary Responsibilities

Warfighter Always is our No. 1 priority! To optimize warfighter outcomes and achieve mission success, our business decisions must balance multiple, sometimes competing, priorities while also infusing critical thinking and innovation into the process. As a steward of taxpayer dollars and an executive agency of the U.S. government, DLA has a fiduciary responsibility to ensure compliance with U.S. laws and regulations, to include those designed to support the U.S. industrial base (i.e., Buy American Act, Berry Amendment). We must support Congressional mandates and DoD interest programs (i.e., UNICOR, AbilityOne, combatant command objectives) to the maximum extent practicable.

Furthermore, we strive to implement category management principles that will leverage common contracts and best practices to drive savings and efficiencies. We also recognize the need to balance the benefits of enterprise-wide purchasing with the need to have a robust small-business supplier base.

Striking this balance, while also promoting a fully fair, open, and competitive marketplace is not always easy, especially when we must make value determinations that ensure business decisions don’t negatively outweigh warfighter mission needs. Our commitment to industry is that our actions will be transparent and arrived at through a deliberative decision making process that considers the appropriate balance of government and industry priorities.

Supplier Feedback Management and Advocacy

DLA remains focused on capturing supplier feedback and using that feedback to drive internal change. DLA’s supplier survey and reporting model uses best practices from industry, academia and consulting. The survey, which is repeatable and usable across the entire federal government, will be conducted on a two-year cycle.

The survey measures DLA on four vectors; DLA Communication, DLA Supplier Relationship, Growth and Profit Potential, and DLA Effectiveness. The data collected allows us to receive a “big picture” of supplier perceptions of DLA supply chain practices and develop action plans to address any areas needing improvement.

We must continue to refine our supply chain practices based on the data we receive from our industry partners and establish organizational behaviors that recognize the value of supplier input. DLA is improving its enterprise-wide process for collecting and assessing information about market segments in which it obtains supplies and services. This will lead to an ability to provide access to commercial data sources to quickly create supplier profiles and industry overviews that go beyond the readily available public resources, and provide analytics that improve the speed to determine fair and reasonable prices and provide best value to the taxpayer.

In addition DLA is moving to inculcate industry knowledge in the workforce. Through partnerships with major universities, DLA offers opportunities for acquisition professionals to take industry-focused courses that teach students how to look through the lens of industry to understand what drives their business decisions, in order to negotiate fair and equitable agreements for both parties. DLA established a “Training with Industry” program where employees have an opportunity to spend an extended length of time with a commercial company, learning about its business and best practices. These opportunities are a key element to building strong partnerships with industry and we look forward to the shared value they will produce.

Drive Efficiencies and Innovation in our Business

With its global reach, diverse business units, and support to the entire Joint Logistics Enterprise, DLA is a supply chain organization like no other. While we will always be different from commercial companies in that our primary objective is warfighter readiness, the agency also seeks to use innovative and efficient approaches to deliver better acquisition outcomes and improve our business processes.

Beyond streamlining procedures, leveraging new systems, and expanding the use of new technological solutions, DLA uses best-in-government and commercial strategies to improve supply chain logistics support. We will look for opportunities to leverage, not duplicate, commercial supply chains, and will continue to educate our workforce to better understand the business dynamics of their suppliers’ industries. Through our robust outreach efforts with suppliers, other government agencies, industry associations, and academic organizations, we will strengthen partnerships and identify potential projects and other innovative and efficient solutions (i.e. reverse engineering, casting & forging, automated procurement) to maintain a secure and resilient supply chain. Events such  as the DLA R&D Collider Day will continue to highlight agency programs that support emerging capabilities in areas such as additive manufacturing, battery network, subsistence network and military unique sustainment technology; logistics research and development; energy readiness; supply chain management; and small-business innovation programs.

We must continue to foster an environment where individuals seek out new and better ways of doing things and are encouraged to take responsible risks that will lead to positive changes throughout the DLA supply chain.

Assess and Mitigate Supply Chain Risk

We continually assess the health of our industrial base, maintain awareness of our supply chain/item vulnerabilities, and mitigate risk within our supplier base to ensure supply chain security and survivability. As noted in DLA’s Supply Chain Security Strategy – this cross-cutting effort is fundamental to our operations and underpins DLA’s ability to support the warfighter. Through our collaborative efforts, we have established programs and systems to aid us in combating counterfeit products, protecting against fraudulent actors and cyber vulnerabilities, and planning for diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages, as well as actively promoting competition to encourage a robust supplier base. DLA will also strengthen operational resiliency by exploiting current and emerging technologies that optimize supply chain risk identification, analysis and reporting through internal and external stakeholder collaboration.

As DLA makes strides to ensure our supplier base is resilient, there are still risks that continuously and dynamically affect DLA’s ability to support the warfighter and require agile and steadfast efforts that address these vulnerabilities. DLA must continue to establish robust collaborative initiatives with industry partners and providing actionable information throughout DLA to ensure we are playing a vigorous role in helping DoD guard against these threats.

Securing DLA’s expansive global supply chain, within the context of a broad threat spectrum, calls on the agency to unlock new solutions to non-linear challenges through bold, innovative ideas. It also demands effective data management techniques to fully integrate the Resilient Supply Chain Operations Scorecard into the Enterprise Dashboard in order to provide a comprehensive, digitized view of the supply chain security landscape. It also requires the agency to leverage readily accessible and emerging technologies and existing data and processes to drive competitive advantage and effective supply chain solutions for the warfighter.

The DLA Office of Small Business Programs proactively engages with the small-business community to increase their knowledge of the DLA mission, improve points of entry and recruit viable participants in our supply chains. Our work supports the DoD Small Business Strategy which recognizes that small businesses are a crucial component in our Nation’s effort to meet increased challenges from adversaries that threaten U.S. technological and industrial dominance. The strategy describes how small businesses buttress production of the most cutting-edge technologies and advanced capabilities, bolster our national security and form an important part of our industrial base.

DLA OSBP is working to expand industry engagement to foster innovation and maximize value for our customers. We help ensure small businesses are included in important discussions about the DLA industrial base to gain operational awareness of innovative solutions in the commercial sector. We also assist small businesses by explaining DLA acquisition processes and offering training to strengthen their ability to compete. Most training is available virtually and is open to everyone. Check our calendar and register.

APEX Accelerators are a nationwide network of community-based procurement professionals that are a free resource to help businesses compete for and perform contracts with DoD, other federal agencies, state and local governments and with government prime contractors.  Find APEX Accelerators' events, formerly known as PTACs, through the APEX Accelerators website.

The AbilityOne Program serves as the primary gateway for helping people with disabilities gain access to the federal contracting marketplace.

Each year, through the AbilityOne Program, the federal government awards nearly $4 billion in government contracts to more than 475 entities (known as nonprofit agencies or NPAs), each of which produces and delivers products or services to federal agencies with a collective workforce of approximately 45,000 people. The DoD continues to be the lead customer of the AbilityOne Program, procuring more than $2 billion of products and services in fiscal 2021.

Today, nearly 35,000 individuals who are blind or have significant disabilities perform work on DoD contracts. To support the larger federal effort to ensure we maintain a strong pathway and promote opportunities to this vital segment of the defense industrial base, DLA has established an AbilityOne Representative (ABOR) Program. The ABOR Program will focus on proactively advocating for the program and working with subordinate organizations to grow AbilityOne program participation where mission needs intersect with AbilityOne capabilities.

R&D is the front end of the innovation cycle. DLA’s R&D program works to bolster innovation by conducting research to develop new processes and technologies that support the logistics effort. R&D efforts are funded through two program elements: 1) Logistics R&D, and 2) Manufacturing Technology Program (ManTech). The program supports DLA’s major supply chains, which include Subsistence, Clothing and Textiles, Medical, Energy, Construction and Equipment, Maritime, Land, Aviation, and Strategic Materials, as well as DLA Service Centers consisting of DLA Distribution, DLA Disposition and Logistics Information Services.

DLA Logistics R&D

Pioneers advanced logistics concepts, business processes, and technologies that use commercial best practices; develops and demonstrates high payoff technologies that provide a high level of support at lower costs. Strategic focus areas include: 1) Enhance analysis and decision support, 2) Improve logistics processes, and 3) Emergent Logistics R&D topics.

DLA ManTech

Supports technical innovation in the DLA industrial base to improve the operational performance of key supply chains.  Strategic focus areas include: 1) Improve industrial base manufacturing processes, 2) Maintain viable supply sources, 3) Improve technical and logistics information, and 4) Emergent ManTech topics.

Small Business Innovation Research; Small Business Technology Transfer and Rapid Innovation Fund

Fosters technology transfer through cooperative R&D between small businesses and research institutions, increases private sector commercialization of innovations derived from federal R&D, and provides the ability to absorb risks associated with early stage R&D projects and ideas by investing in disruptive industrial base innovations to improve cost, quality, and delivery.  Visit the Small Business Innovation Research website, the Defense Innovation Marketplace website, or contact Logistics.research@dla.mil.