Beyond CQI-9: A Customized Approach to CQI-9 and Supplier Management

The current Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) CQI-9 audit process has limited effectiveness to proactively detect heat treatment quality risks in Tier-1 and Tier-2 supply bases. A cross-functional engineering organization developed an improved supplier audit form using CQI-9, National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program (NADCAP), International Automotive Task Force (IATF), and specific internal company standards to distinguish and quantify production issues that may have been undiscovered with the existing CQI-9 approach. Representatives from engineering, commercial, and manufacturing crafted a more complete approach to supply chain quality. This new audit format (Beyond CQI-9) has demonstrated the ability to quantify heat treatment concerns, reduce future engineering resource costs, and develop new and existing heat treatment suppliers to meet world class quality levels.

How to Bail Out a Defense Contractor: Cases on Securing a Supply Chain in extremis

How can governments effectively bail out faltering defense contractors? While the idea may seem politically distasteful, any defense ministry with domestic suppliers may view the problem as supplier management in extremis. Reviewing nine prominent bailouts of defense contractors from the past 50 years, the author draws two conclusions. Providing long-term demand is very likely necessary and sufficient to maintain industry structures. Providing short-term infusions of cash may be necessary to maintain programs, but it is not always sufficient. If legislators and defense officials wish to consider either approach for short-term or long-term objectives, they should also consider the historical lessons of the financial and information asymmetries between government and industry, and the general uncertainty over how technologies will evolve.

How to Bail Out a Defense Contractor: Cases on Securing a Supply Chain in extremis

How can governments effectively bail out faltering defense contractors? While the idea may seem politically distasteful, any defense ministry with domestic suppliers may view the problem as supplier management in extremis. Reviewing nine prominent bailouts of defense contractors from the past 50 years, the author draws two conclusions. Providing long-term demand is very likely necessary and sufficient to maintain industry structures. Providing short-term infusions of cash may be necessary to maintain programs, but it is not always sufficient. If legislators and defense officials wish to consider either approach for short-term or long-term objectives, they should also consider the historical lessons of the financial and information asymmetries between government and industry, and the general uncertainty over how technologies will evolve.

User Innovation and System Management

This chapter investigates the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC), the analogue to the Fighter Command Ops Room in the modern U.S. Air Force. The air force formally designates the CAOC as a weapon system, even as it is basically just a large office space with hundreds of computer workstations, conference rooms, and display screens. The CAOC is an informational weapon system that coordinates all of the other weapon systems that actually conduct air defense, strategic attack, close air support, air mobility and logistics, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). One might be tempted to describe the CAOC as “a center of calculation,” but modern digital technology tends to decenter information practice. Representations of all the relevant entities and events in a modern air campaign reside in digital data files rather than a central plotting table. The relevant information is fragmented across collection platforms, classified networks, and software systems that are managed by different services and agencies. Thus, in each of the four major U.S. air campaigns from 1991 to 2003, CAOC personnel struggled with information friction. They rarely used the mission planning systems that were produced by defense contractors as planned, and they improvised to address emerging warfighting requirements.

Methodological Support for Separate Accounting of the Performance of State Defense contractors (SDc)

Currently, the Russian Federation invests heavily in the production of products under the state defense order (hereinafter — SDO). The head executors and executors of the state budget are obliged to ensure separate accounting of the results of financial and economic activities for each state contract. The article is devoted to the development of methodological support for separate accounting of performance at enterprises which are the executors of the state budget. The research methodology is an analysis of existing methodological approaches to separate accounting of financial results of the SDO and the construction of the author’s own methodology on their basis. The article offers recommendations on the organization and methodology of separate accounting of the results of financial and economic activity by the organizations-executors of the SDO. The author’s definition of the term “separate accounting of the results of financial and economic activities in SDO” is given. The form of the register of accounting for grouping of the actual costs for execution of the SDO is developed. The developed recommendations for management job order costing accounting, clearance accounting, classification of costs by types, and the formation of registers of analytical accounting will allow the organizations-executors of the SDO to keep separate records in accordance with the regulatory requirements and to obtain information on the financial results of each contract at any given time.

Shareholder nationality among the major European and American defense contractors: an exploratory data analysis

This article presents the first results of a statistical analysis of the ownership links between the major European and American defence contractors. This approach, centred on the shareholders and subsidiaries of these companies, enables us to explore the depth of the national links (company and country of origin) and the density of the ownership cooperation that exists within Europe, as well as with the rest of the world, particularly the United States. Information about defence contractors’ ownership links is difficult to obtain and precautions must be taken in the interpretation of the results. In terms of defence contractor shareholders, it would appear first that the national link is strong for Sweden, Spain and France, less so for Germany and Italy, and particularly weak for the United Kingdom. Next, in European terms the links are concentrated on Airbus, MBDA and KNDS and are little developed in other companies. Finally, we observe asymmetrical links with the USA and a significant presence of American investment funds.