Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic’s Supply Chain Management (SCM) service center has been able to keep rates steady over the past four years by cutting costs, all while maintaining optimal service levels.
The SCM service center supports procurement, receipt control, material management and distribution, shipping and disposal for the command and its sponsors.
The center has logistics hubs in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the Hampton Roads, Virginia, area and serves NIWC Atlantic facilities in Patuxent River, Maryland, and New Orleans, Louisiana.
The center’s team has been able to cut costs without raising rates by getting a handle on their expenses. The process entailed reviewing transactional data, equipment usage, contract line-item numbers, retirement dates, anticipated attrition, apportionments and alternative options that could possibly contain costs.
Under Jason Janco, SCM service center manager, the service center team developed a fair and equitable rate structure that provides a valued service for customers throughout the command.
“There is definitely a balancing act to containing costs while maintaining service levels,” Janco said. “It has been an intentional effort that we’ve been able to steadily implement over the past four years.”
The team continuously monitored the service center’s expenses and service levels and worked closely with management to recommend a staffing model that makes sense based on transactional history and expected demand of NIWC Atlantic services.
“We listened to the customers and got a better understanding of their budgetary constraints; it made sense to take a round-turn on our own operations and pass that savings along to them,” Janco said.
In addition to command expenses, they also monitored the service center’s operational capacity, such as facilities, to ensure they have flex capacity to assist customers if the requirement dictates.
With expenses baselined and monitored, the focus shifted to the day-to-day operations and to ensuring the service center is executing an efficient revenue collection process.
“We have trimmed down our operations to a point where we are in the sustainment phase, at least based on how we’re currently set up to operate,” Janco said.
Janco credits the service center’s success to the collaboration among NIWC Atlantic’s employees and customers.
“Our business results are a team effort,” said Janco. “The real work is done on our warehouse floors by our service center staff. Our customer base and their business financial managers are a big part of our success as well. We’ve also had a lot of help from the command’s finance team along the way, and I consider them a valuable resource for our service center.”
NIWC Atlantic Deputy Comptroller Michael Smith, who leads the finance team, echoed Janco’s sentiments, saying that the collaboration between his team and the service center team has been instrumental in delivering the best products and services to the command’s customers.
“Jason and his team of dedicated professionals have done a tremendous job in providing a valuable service while reducing our cost to our customers,” Smith said. “Their expertise in being a customer service provider and always looking to be a low-cost provider is second to none.”
Though service center team has been able to keep the rates steady over time, Janco said the process wasn’t always seamless.
“In a matrixed organization like ours, it’s not always easy to improve our business results because we are not always in control of all the factors that affect the bottom line,” Janco said. “Put in the context of what the service center itself can control, we are always looking to streamline our operations. If in the future we see an opportunity to save money for the customer and maintain service levels, we will certainly try all avenues to implement the cost savings measure.”
Having fair and equitable rates is extremely important to NIWC Atlantic’s project teams, especially in the current budget constrained environment, said Paul Kelsey, supervisor for NIWC Atlantic’s Expeditionary Systems Logistics team.
“The fact that the SCM service center rates have been relatively steady over the past few years has been especially important as the projects usually have to provide budget forecasts to our sponsors/customers well in advance of the new rates being published by the command,” Kelsey said.
Kelsey, who has interacted with the service center on a daily basis since the start of his career with NIWC Atlantic nearly 12 years ago, has utilized all aspects of the center over the years to include material receiving, movement and storage, procurement support, transportation and disposal.
Kelsey said he has seen the service center grow tremendously with the implementation of new services and steadily making planning and budgeting seamless while maintaining the same level of exceptional service.
“On my projects specifically, the service center has assisted with hundreds of procurements and shipments of both material and vehicles destined for the warfighters,” Kelsey said. “The personnel supporting the service center are extremely professional and knowledgeable, and this expertise has been instrumental in ensuring the successful fielding of information warfare systems to the warfighters. We could not accomplish our mission without them.”
About NIWC Atlantic
As a part of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, formerly known as SPAWAR, NIWC Atlantic provides systems engineering and acquisition to deliver information warfare capabilities to the naval, joint and national warfighter through the acquisition, development, integration, production, test, deployment, and sustainment of interoperable command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, cyber and information technology capabilities.