Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, while charged with maintaining mission capable rates across the Navy’s fleet of Super Hornets and Growlers, the F/A-18 and EA-18G Program Office (PMA-265)-led Integrated Supply Chain Management (ISCM) Team revolutionized Fleet support practices and successfully resolved major logistics issues.

The team leveraged cutting-edge commercial best practices to drive visibility into the supply chain, developed innovative digital tools and streamlined antiquated processes, and pioneered a new forecasting model, the ISCM Control Tower, which enables smarter, data-driven supply chain decision-making by collating data from more than 150 separate databases into a single source with functional drill-down capability. A new set of processes and business rules were established and implemented to attack supply chain gaps, facilitate alignment and accountability across the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE), and significantly improve spares and repairs production and material availability.

Through expert coordination of key stakeholders, increased commercial and organic repair velocity, application of advanced analytics, including machine learning, to improve demand forecasting across the supply chain end-to-end, and development of comprehensive, corrective courses of action, the ISCM Team was able to implement leaner repair processes and bolster F/A-18 and EA-18G readiness.

Following the initial significant success, the ISCM Team orchestrated an NAE-wide roll out of the sustainment concept across Naval Aviation and Supply communities for use to increase readiness across 3,400 fixed and rotary wing aircraft.

PMA-265 is one of six Naval Air Systems Command teams to win a Department of the Navy’s Acquisition Excellence Award this year from 170 nominations across the Navy.