LPTA Versus Tradeoff: Analysis of Contract Source Selection Strategies and Performance Outcomes

Abstract

The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has mandated that every component that meets certain cost and management criteria in the Department of Defense's (DoD) tangible inventory must have a valid Item Unique Identification (IUID) mark by December 2010. The IUID program is expected to increase force readiness, enhance the lifecycle management of assets, and provide more accurate asset valuation to achieve unqualified audit opinions on DoD financial statements. One of the challenges of the program is to achieve IUID-marking saturation throughout in-use, or legacy, inventories with minimal interruption of operational readiness. The purpose of this project is to propose an effective implementation strategy for the legacy items that meet the DoD's requirements for IUID marking in the US Marine Corps M1A1 Abrams tank community. This plan could potentially serve as a model for other communities facing the challenge of IUID implementation. This project examines different implementation alternatives and identifies and develops the determined best course of action. In addition, this project provides an estimation of the costs to implement the chosen plan for comparison and decision-making purposes.