AUSA 2020 CMF 2 - Driving Deliberate Change in the Industrial Base

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welcome to ausa now the association of the united states army's 66th annual meeting and exposition i'm lieutenant general retired tonight good afternoon on behalf of our panel chair dr bruce jetty the assistant secretary of the army technology it is unmuted on behalf of our dr bruce jenny assistant secretary of the army technology general ed daley the cg of u.s army and and our distinguishment i'd like to thank you for the united states army to put together this virtual meeting and for all that it does our soldiers i'm on i'm unused and my mic was working welcome to ausa the association of dragon ball 66 i'm lieutenant general retired good afternoon on behalf of our prayer dr bruce jetty the assistant secretary of the army logistics and technology general ed daley the cg of u.s army material we are pleased to present every military film on the critical subject how we deliberate change the importance of great faith through innovation and cooperation our army must have a health industrial base in order to ensure true report homeless now and into the future to address this important dr jetty the appropriation of the united states [Music] arun sarah professional staff member armed services committee and mr j douglas chief operating officer for the advanced robotic institute after our panel chair number offer comments we'll leave about 20 questions to ask a question that function on your screen ladies and gentlemen good afternoon everyone uh thank you for uh coming to this uh this session of being able to discuss the uh organic industrial base uh so let me go ahead and get started so we give plenty of time for questions um so if you could bring up the first uh slide so safety safety for the workforce number one of uh our number one priority is rooted is rooted in the fact that our facilities that we currently have in the organic industrial base let me let me lay them out for you really quickly if you're not especially familiar with them uh we have gogos and gocos gocos are government owned government operated go codes they're government owned contractor operated the vast majority of my comments today will stem from the go cos those go cos are halston radford lake city iowa army ammunition plant and scranton during the course i'll if i touch on one particularly i can explain what it is we have two gogos which are operated uh those gocos are fundamentally operated by the peo uh go goes mcallister and pine bluff are fundamentally operated by army material command and i know that uh general daily will have uh uh some additions additional things to discuss there these facilities were developed in the 1940s uh in support of world war ii and they if you were to visit them uh are technologies that are rooted in the 1940s uh it doesn't mean that the technologies are poor nor that we did anything to not improve them there are in fact a good number of improvements have been made to these facilities uh some of them technical most of them policies and procedures and i think one of the most important ones is a disciplined workforce that always functions in compliance with those policies and procedures for safe operations um however even with the safe operations complying with the policies and procedures we've had three deaths at the organic industrial base facilities that go cos uh in the last 10 years um the the low number is in part due to this disciplined operation that that we i'm i'm talking about uh but still all deaths are tragic and we must work to eliminate any possible cause of of deaths um i'm going to mention the names of each of the people in the basic circumstances behind each of them because i think that their their uh sacrifice in trying to pursue that which the uh army needs for its uh ability to fight and win the nation's wars are something that we should remember andrew goad died in the propellant fire on 11 june 2018 at radford doing exactly what he was supposed to do lawrence bass died in a tetrazine fire when a primer exploded on 11 april 2017 at lake city army ammunition plan uh troy snot died in an excavation rollover working on the facility but not specifically directly with the munitions production itself so how do we actually uh leverage the fact that we're doing modernization when when in fact as you can see um on the next slide we not need not to just simply modernize but to transform so transformation not modernization is where we need to go we have done as i said a large number of modernizations it still hasn't prevented all possible accidents we need to relook facilities we need to re-look contracting we need to look re-look our organizational relationships i'll mention that in a second we need to relook do we have a difference in the way we behave at a go co versus a go-go and we need to relook the finances and management of them get people away from the energetics there's no reason they have to be there anymore with the technologies robotic operations modular batch processing fault tolerance through uh multiple lines and reconfigurable production lines with batch control and better testing we need assured supply next next slide material sources are not always available from the us and not economically available for the us we need a path to assured u.s sources if possible we need to accept price uh differences this is a discussion we can have about congress's support we need to develop uh production at the is for some critical components and work with the environmental cost implications and we need to examine new sources for capabilities versus chemicals some of the things we buy maybe we could not need anymore if we developed alternatives and finally the the thing i'd like to highlight at the bottom there is a foundation you see there there was often this tension between the assault based peo structure and amc when in fact uh we've tried to uh general daily and i have tried to work very diligently to uh make that a transition between the two with the clear definition between uh what what is the responsibility of the peo and what's the responsibility of of amc and the joint munitions command um all of these things are coming together to give us a very uh sound base and uh something to build on and i'll hold my comments from this point on and allow the others to talk and to take questions as you provide thank you general ed daley michael sir could you hear me over yes okay great uh ladies and gentlemen good afternoon uh let me start by thanking general ham and ausa for this year's annual virtual meeting and for what they do to support our soldiers veterans army civilians and their families each and every day i have one slide if we can pull up that slide um so first to echo what bruce jenny just talked about i'm truly honored to participate with dr j jennifer micah and fellow panel members to discuss the army's organic industrial base as dr jetty stated the purpose of the oib is really three-fold one to enable current readiness two to modernize to sustain future weapons platforms and three to support future co-com wartime surge requirements when and if required within army material command we take our roles responsibilities very very seriously based on command authorities given to us through title 10 secretary mccarthy and general mcconville and army regulations and just to refresh people's memory that includes responsibility for manufacturing production distribution storage surveillance strategic divestiture and demilitarization as well as mission command of depot arsenal's infrastructure and energy programs across the oib my relationship with both the army g4 and dr jetty in support of his role as both the army's acquisition executive and the single manager for conventional munition uh the simca is critical and i will tell you unequivocally that we're 100 sync there's no daylight between us as he mentioned based on the guidance of the secretary of the army and the chief dr jetty and i are committed to developing a 15-year comprehensive holistic strategy as he mentioned more transformational than just focused on modernization across the entire oib for the army we're setting a new paradigm for driving revolutionary transformation and you can see from the slide the four lines of effort in support of both army priorities and the campaign objectives through army 2024 and beyond today's organic industrial base includes 26 depots arsenals ammunition plants and medical repair facilities valued at more than 40 billion dollars and as dr jenny mentioned split between gogos and go codes goco's number eight and gogos are 18 in number within the workforce of more than 32 000 skilled artisans crossing state lines 17 states these sites directly impact readiness not only for the army but for the joint force and many portfolios such as c45isr and last year the oib executed about 4.6 billion dollars in workload that impacted tactical readiness across the force as you know most of the oib facilities are designed and built during the world war ii era as dr jenny mentioned moving forward incremental and piecemeal upgrades will not get us to modernized and transformational oib we need to transform the antiquated unreliable ineffective machinery and facilities meet a holistic long-term investment strategy now i will say we've made some impacts over the past 10 years we've made progress a few examples of 21st century investments that support both current and future modernization efforts include an investment of nearly 400 million dollars in a nitrocellulose facility in radford uh the base ingredient of the majority of dod propellants uh the second is an energy efficient powertrain facility with state-of-the-art engine test cells at the aviation depot corpus christi texas at lake city ammunition plant upgrades for primer cartridge and bullet manufacturing with 21st century technology and continued planning for new construction to support the next generation squad weapon ammunition requirement and water really arsenal rotary forge and chrome plating facility as well as double carriage lanes to it to enhance capabilities in support of the extended range cannon artillery gun tubes tied to modernization of the infrastructure is streamlining oib processes and pursuing new state-of-the-art equipment we're integrating a number of cutting-edge technologies including computer program logic robotics ai maintenance analytics and prognostic sensors for our equipment and additive manufacturing and subtractive manufacturing capabilities been installed at 14 sites across the oib with rock island as the current center of excellence and as i mentioned while we've made significant progress in investment to the tune of about 5 billion since 2009 there's still much to do we're committed to the protection and safety of our workforce the protection of our critical capabilities reducing our single points of failure as well as decreasing reliance on foreign suppliers so i'll stop there i look forward to your questions again thanks it's an honor to be part thank you general daley and now general ladies and gentlemen good afternoon it truly is great to be with you here today to discuss how we're driving deliberate change in the industrial base as you've heard at its core the vision that dr jetty and general daly have laid out is centered on an industrial based strategy that will ensure the safety of the oib workforce transform processes and equipment and strengthen supply chain resiliency as an essential element in achieving this vision we must develop a strategic sourcing plan focused on supply chain resiliency jpo product managers have launched the campaign to deep dive into sources of supply and points of failure they're identifying priority efforts and driving solutions to address risk in areas that cover multiple organizations or cross-military services we're pulling that validation process and solution development up to the peo headquarters level for increased visibility and coordination all along the way we must foster practices that drive innovative solutions to emerging risks success will require new manufacturing processes alternate materials and novel end product pathways to aid in manufacturability so that in the end supplies can be sourced domestically or by strategic partners we are assembling scientists and engineers from across the s t community with expertise in chemistry energetics and manufacturing to address these challenges this is a big effort and not one that we can do nor should do in isolation continued collaboration with our teammates and armored materiel command is an essential component to the success of this endeavor our partners at the joint munition command bring the expertise needed in developing a common operating picture of our global supply chain and the associated logistical challenges their decades of experiences is allowing us to hit the ground running we're gaining momentum by further developing the relationships with our industry partners a seamless understanding of both the commercial and government supply chain down to component and even raw material level is needed to develop safe secure and readily available supplies to ensure not only the peacetime requirements but also our wartime needs our industry partners possess unique expertise and insights into the problem set and we welcome their involvement in finding solutions that benefit both the organic and the commercial industrial base we cannot forget our international partners and the capabilities they offer not just from a manufacturing perspective but from a geographical supply chain look as well their insights and continued partnership is critical to our assessment and planning lastly we could not accomplish this without the continued support of congress so together the vision and the team will drive innovation and lead us to the desired end state of transformational change across the industrial base we will harness technology and embrace novel solutions to enable ever safer operations and enhance supply chain resiliency the nation's industrial-based assets that ensure the readiness of the joint force today will remain viable to meet the needs of the force of 2035 and beyond it's a lot to do and it won't be easy but we have a team that will rise to the challenge thanks for the opportunity to speak with you today and i look forward to answering your questions and thank you general malone thanks thanks for the opportunity to speak here today i just want to start with the standard disclaimer that my remarks represent my own views and not the views of the committee or the congress as a whole in listening to the three speakers before me i'm encouraged to hear that the army is focusing in on the challenges of modernizing the organic industrial base for those important army missions i mean i think i i have a few questions and observations i think that would come from the congressional perspective at the top level you know are we creating a system by which we are encouraging investing in incorporating those new technologies that are actually going to modernize the organic industrial base um for example you know are we looking at the requirements process and it is really driven to transform the system or is it driven to do incremental improvements to the system is it really looking at those maybe not so exciting but smaller technologies that can have a big impact on performance of the industrial base and especially cost savings um when we think about the partnerships that are so critical in this area which which are driven by the fact that many of these technologies are dual use and commercial in nature is the army making use of all the authority that congress has given to it under acquisition reform under the centers for industrial and technical excellence to share people to share intellectual property to share facilities with the private sector to push forward army missions for example we've got good models by which we can cooperate with our foreign partners under things like the foreign comparative test program should there be something like that on the domestic side to look at advanced domestic technologies that maybe we could incorporate into the industrial basin and potentially disrupt the way we're doing business similarly we have a system by which we have energy savings performance contracts to encourage investment in energy savings technology and sharing the savings with the private sector we have a similar model for operations a way of sharing and saving um i think that uh the other thing we need to think about is how we invest in our people people who operate these facilities those artisans who work in all of those obscure engineering and technology um when we're serious about a technical area we really honor its workforce as we see the army doing in software right um are we doing the same things for the organization are we serious about increasing our spending and infrastructure spending are we serious about encouraging training and retraining that workforce are we serious about honoring the tower through investment and through senior leader attention to the important work that they're doing so if we could uh bring up the same enthusiasm the same kind of ideas same kind of step the army's using today to modernize the software process i think a lot more progress than looking at our industrial basement and i'll finish with just thinking about we're very comfortable you know that's the r d dollars and even manufacturing dollars to shore up industrial bases um i'm not sure we do enough on the r d prime ever i continue to say we can do more with fbi just to stabilize them to grow their businesses it's a natural follow-on to our spending on rsd and kind of money but we really don't have the policy in place to target our procurement dollars at those kinds of companies those domestic suppliers those parts of the industrial base that we can use those in procurement to stand up and protect those industrial bases to shore up our supply chain security to keep them more resilient against financial distress so uh just to summarize i'm thinking about pushing on partnerships to honoring the people and to better the procurement dollars i think those kind of steps will help shorten our industry i look forward to the questions thank you dr serafin if i could ask the panel if you're not so we don't get feedback from the cars the panelists that are speaking and now uh mr j thank you uh general formica and it's an honor to be a member of this uh this panel today i represent the advanced robotics for manufacturing institute we're one of 15 manufacturing innovation institutes and we focus in robotics robots are great in the manufacturing space for dealing with dull dirty dangerous tasks they make things a lot safer for the workforce you can see on this chart that we work across a broad range of areas technical areas as well as improving workforce issues for the supply chain we represent an organization a public-private partnership of 275 organizations these are large aerospace companies some of the biggest universe technology startups that are involved in some of the most innovative robotics solutions available today we do we operate through a series of project calls we work with our partners in the dod and our members to come up with the ideas and the problems that are most necessary for solutions we've been able to work very rapidly from problem definition all the way through funding of the project most recently within a period of about six to eight weeks uh we have been able to respond to some of the pandemic issues very quickly just this past six months we are an asset to the national economy but specifically to those in the dod that are trying to solve manufacturing and innovation problems rapidly with the best that the united states economy has to offer uh thank you i once again i'm honored to be here and looking forward to your questions and uh thank you doctor so we've heard from diverse perspectives on this very important topic and as we wait for your questions again i'd like to start off with a question that perhaps but you've laid out the need for transformative change and an aggressive approach or which is appropriate you need this kind of chain so um so i i appreciate the question and uh let me let me see if i can touch base really quickly on it um so i give others others a chance to weigh in um one of the things i wanted to make sure that we were doing was seeing congress as a partner in this process um to change the organic industrial base is a a big challenge it tends to be you know it's it tends to be kind of not thought of as the point the end of the spear yet everything at the pointy end of the spear is dependent upon the the this the space at the back end of the spear that that's called the organic industrial base because of that since february i've been working with the congressional staffers on a weekly about every other week uh we meet on uh phone con and just discuss things one of the things i've raised a number of times has been this organic and industrial-based issue and the modernization challenges that we have i've spent a lot of time talking with general daly and us trying to take a look at what our current state of affairs are and how we might be able to move forward there's an existing plan from for 2025 that was written in 2016 that is basically as i said modernization not transformation and so what we did was we said we needed to generate a hearing which begins to lay a foundation for cooperation between the army and the congressional congressional committees on how we can get a revised variant to our um to our efforts move it from modernization to transformation um not all of it's money uh there are environmental issues there are optimization issues for example most of our our efforts right now are optimization associated with the cost of the ammunition we procure how do we make sure we have the most ammo for the dollars we spend the problem with that is it drives us to the least expensive commodities that go into the ammo when you do that sometimes that's offshore if i want to move it onshore it changes it it becomes more challenging because then i end up involved with either a more expensive product from a commercial entity that may produce it or if there's no current production in the united states usually that's tied to environmental issues and a much more expensive facility to establish a capability so the optimization is do i want to optimize our assured munitions or do i want to optimize our price of munitions to deal with that i'm going to have to have congress involved and by the way arun i i took notes because you gave some good good suggestions [Music] yeah please yeah uh so first uh so just to tag on to what dr jenny said um again um i think he and i are 100 synced on this um but first let me just say that we truly of course uh appreciate the support of both congress and osd uh especially as we um look at this uh effort for a 15-year transformational modernization strategy uh based on the guidance from the sec army and the chief of staff um but there's five areas where i think we need assistance one is continued direct hiring authorities uh for our workforce as somebody mentioned uh it's really the cornerstone of our orib we really appreciate the extension uh out to 2025 of those authorities they're really making a difference but as we really transform the oib for the future it doesn't mean a reduction of personnel what it really means is realigning skills and attributes uh to to the new work load which will be and now involving robotics etc the second thing is continued advocacy for partnerships um whether they're public private or public public partnerships as you know we have about 350 of those partnerships valued at about 250 million dollars those are critical along with the armament retooling and manufacturing support arms which is really as many people know essentially leasing at uh at goco's underutilized capability so that's necessary going forward and then support for natural gas extraction not only to get to net zero at some of our locations and installations but to be able to increase revenue for department of defense and then lastly and quite frankly probably the most important is timely adequate and predictable funding and i would add without penalization for carryover which directly affects workload readiness and workforce levels so i think those are the five areas that we've appreciated the support of both congress and osd and we just have to continue to get that going forward if we're going to realize both the secretary of the army and the chief of staff of the army's vision for this 15-year strategy going forward dr sheriff and would you like me i think um all of those items that uh that have been raised so far i think congress could be supportive of um i think it's open and continuous dialogue on what's needed to support the depots to support the industrial base that's going to be important you got to remember these are very important constituents to the members of congress and they've generally tried to do what they can to support them if the army is showing an interest in actually modernizing the facilities uh investing in the workforce i think congress would be very supportive on the on the notion of budgetary reform i think that's key for all acquisition reform whether we're talking about organic industrial base or or industrial based more broadly i think that's also a place where we we haven't really gotten into a good conversation between the executive branch and the legislative point on the steps to be taken for example um from a congressional perspective we understand the technology and threat is changing by the day it's hard for us to understand why it takes multiple years for the executive branch to develop a budget request given that technology and threat are changing by the day when that when that request is delivered early in the year in january and february it's hard for us to understand why we can't work with the executive branch to adjust that budget request as technology and threat are changing so that we get it right on the day of appropriations so i think that kind of partnership with the between the hill and the executive branch would result in appropriations that are more timely and more relevant to technology and threat and we just have to sort of come out of our our trenches and work together to produce best possible uh appropriations i think at the end of uh yet they remain we've assumed risk coming in a little broken could you repeat the last bit of that question please yes the last thing i was assumed for a long time what does your timeline most improve initiative okay so i tried as i tried to indicate in my remarks we've initiated action now you know we're we are prioritizing those single points of failure that we've identified so far as well as our sources of supply the most critical ones we're getting after now but i see this being a journey a long time journey as we continue to drill down into our supply chain so i think what this is going to require is at least a 15-year strategy and that strategy will evolve over time as we learn more and more about our supply chain and and we continue to develop risk reduction methodologies and answers to address those supply chain risks and i hope that answers the question thank you does anybody can you hear me yes yeah uh so i would add to what vince said uh so just a couple other things for consideration as we look at this 15-year strategy and dr jenny and i have discussed this is uh single points of failure that exists in terms of capabilities within the organic industrial base currently that's within the confines of the installations and so one i think we have to look at going forward potential redundancies um first off the second piece is protection in ways that we haven't thought of before to include expanding our thoughts to protection uh from a cyber domain perspective uh and so those are the pieces that i would just add on to vince's point uh because i think it's a valid question as we go forward with this 15-year strategy okay thank you i'd like to direct the question to any of the panelists as part of this says the pace of change we are systems and organizations set up to accommodate how can we organize the way that capability and knowledge experience thank you i think that's a great question one of the key things is it's not always just about the fancy technology solution quite often the system the business model and the organization has to change too there's a lot of innovation that goes into the thinking of not just what a fancy robot can do but how the organization itself has to operate so i think that's a key challenge that is as people and leaders of these organizations you must always be cognizant of the broad dimensions of these problems uh dr jenny yeah so it's a great question so and and i i really appreciate you know having our industry partner uh be able to be on the panel and frankly the the desire to to to uh not just have us uh closed form inside the government uh was specifically to show that the army is um is looking very hard at trying to find a way to do uh to leverage uh these type of technologies um i i i made a point uh in in my little opening remarks uh that when modernization is not what we're pursuing we're pursuing transformation what do we mean by transformation it it it isn't that i want to do the way we've been doing it better it's i want to get a new way of doing what we want to get done under a new set of parameters i want this modularity right now we produce high explosives at halston in a 550 pound batch if any one of them goes up we lose a building if i could produce it in faster so i'm still producing at the same total rate uh one pound batch segregated from others that if one pound was to go up it would not cause conflagration of the entire facility or loss of a building but only the loss of that explosive it's a better design you do that all in an automated fashion so that that that the people involved don't have to come in physical contact with explosives throughout the production process and then only only the point of packing and safe operations at that end would they come in contact with it fault tolerance multiple lines reconfigurability uh batch control all of these are modern concepts inside of um how you build industrial complexes today uh which are different than how we've looked at it in the past and that's one reason as we begin to move forward much as general daily as said in this uh pursuit of a 15-year plan we're going to be looking for industrial partners that that can operate the plants but they may not be the people who build the plants because the people who build the plants may be chemical companies or other manufacturing capabilities that are brought to bear like the robotic systems so we're looking at a a much more responsible way for us at the at in the army senior leadership to take ownership of the transformational uh character of what we're doing have the responsibility of selecting the right people to do the different portions of our transformational change and then implementing those um those efforts to truly make transformational change occur in the kind of the context i was i was mentioning earlier thank you sir we've got about three together to answer this the secretary and the team have prioritized the question is how do and retain secretary workforce to maintain the industrial payment general daily first you came in broken could you repeat the question please yes and i apologize for that um i said that the secretary can you hear me now general daley i i can i can sure thanks the secretary and the chief have prioritized people how do we attract entertain the necessary workforce to achieve what you achieve in the industrial way yeah so that's a great question and i think it's really two lines of effort uh one is to continue to invest in the current artisan workforce that we have running our organic industrial base at present 32 000 as we mentioned uh constantly making sure that we are training and educating them protecting them from a safety perspective uh in all we do um and uh enabled by the direct hire authority that lets us continue to recruit uh the right skill sets going forward um preserving the workforce in terms of numbers but realigning their skills to a modernized approach in the organic industrial base uh sometimes people think that we say modernization transformation that's code for reduction of a workforce that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about recruiting different skill sets that can help work robotics and ai and computer programming logic etc uh and so it's paramount that you know our our direct hire authorities continue uh but but the complexion and the skills and knowledge of our workforce will change over time and that really gets that to what the secretary and the chief were talking about in terms of maintaining the fact that our workforce our soldiers our d.a civilians and workforce that comes to work each and every day in the oib is taken care of and that we look to the future in terms of them making great contributions thank you sir yeah thank you general formica because that is a very important question because you know in order to get the solutions we're going to need uh to address new materials novel end products it's going to take the expertise of our workforce not just the workforce we have today but the workforce that we will grow over the years we need expertise in chemistry energetics and manufacturing and those are all in high demand at an industry so how do we attract and retain that talent to our team and the feedback that we get from our employees that they enjoy the most is they enjoy the challenges that they get to work on in the army and then they enjoy the autonomy that they have in making a difference and so that is something that we have to leverage to our advantage and in this case we're talking about a strategy that we will be working on for over 15 years so this is an opportunity of the workforce to get on board and to make a difference over the course of the of their career and i think that is something that will resonate well with them we have to attract this workforce we need to take advantage of um opportunities we have to bring those colleagues that college talent in and introduce them to what we do in the army and what we do here at uh picatinny arsenal to get them interested in it we have internship programs we need to continue to leverage those we need once we get them on board we need to continue to mock to mentor uh those that talent and and make and allow them the opportunity to move up the chain so that they see the career progression and they believe they're on a path to success in the organization okay thank you very much so i would like to thank for their preparation their thoughtful comment and their responses to your quote and of course we thank you for your attention i'd like to give dr the pen so so i'm going to put two quick words in on the on the last question because i think it's really important people are our greatest asset and that's why i led with it as my uh my uh my in my comments uh this includes all the way down to the pm's and their education program we're going to be shaping some people by their proper education so that they they know how to work industry better um and and we're going to transform the workforce not tr replace it so they're they're uh there are good things in store for the workforce as well i want to thank everybody for uh support and attending all the all the people on the other side of the screen it's a little bit odd not knowing uh but thank you very much for your help and an opportunity to present
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Channel: U.S. Army Professional Forum
Views: 109
Rating: 5 out of 5
Keywords: US Army, Army Professional Development
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Length: 47min 51sec (2871 seconds)
Published: Thu Oct 22 2020
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