RICHMOND, Va. -

Building resiliency and solving challenges within military and supporting industrial supply chains drove discussions during the 2024 Senior Executive Partnership Roundtable held Oct. 29-30 at the Defense Logistics Agency Aviation headquarters in Richmond.

The DLA Aviation-sponsored event focused on developing strategic partnerships and identifying issues, concerns and best practices by bringing together senior leaders and executives from DLA, the Defense Department's Office of Small Business Programs and all 13 DLA Aviation Strategic Supplier Alliance companies; along with customers from Army Aviation and Missile Command, Air Force Materiel Command and Naval Supply Systems Command Weapons Systems Support.

To get the attendees on the same page, Air Force Brig. Gen. Chad Ellsworth, DLA Aviation commander, homed in on the shared mission between the agency and its partners.

"We are all in the same ship trying to do the same thing, which is to defend and protect our nation," he said. "So, we are here to support the warfighters. We say in DLA that we are the warfighter supporting the warfighter. It doesn't matter what uniform you wear, whether a coat and tie or a blazer or a uniform.

"We represent our country as a combat support agency that is here to get what the warfighter needs," Ellsworth continued. "We could not do that without you."

Ellsworth then introduced Brad Bunn, DLA's vice director, who explained the agency's transformation plans and how they apply to those in attendance.

Events like the SEPRT drive innovation to tackle the "gnarly problems we have in our ecosystem," Bunn said, before explaining where DLA is headed in a transformation journey designed to enable its military, whole of government and international partners to achieve and maintain a state of readiness throughout the whole continuum of conflict.

"DLA exists to support combat for the combat demands, and so we are reinvigorating that aspect of our charter and our mission, looking at where we might be falling short, and assessing ourselves honestly on our readiness to provide direct combat support to combatant commands in a contingency or in conflict," he said. "We are taking some deliberate steps to assess ourselves against the criteria for what constitutes an effective combat support agency, and we're going to get after those gaps. It also is a signal to all of our stakeholders that - first and foremost - we exist to support our warfighting partners. Our vision: agile, adaptive and resilient logistics support across that continuum.

"It's a recognition that in these current times, and what we expect in the future, we have to be more adaptive and less brittle in terms of our solutions," Bunn continued. "Resilience is really about adding some potential necessary redundancy and how we support our warfighting partners, which may have a financial or fiscal impact, but being a responsible combat support agency, it is something that we think we're going to have to get after."

DLA's new 2025-2030 Strategic Plan leads the way for the agency's transformation goals, Bunn said, referring to it as a call to action.

"There's content in it that is focused internally on DLA," he said, "and what we need to change to think, act and operate differently to address these challenges we have, (like) operating in a contested environment and potential large-scale combat operations and what that looks like, especially after coming out of a couple of decades of a very different kind of conflict."

Bunn shared that DLA Director Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly, U.S. Army, began a deliberate assessment with his senior leadership team immediately after taking command in February. Simerly looked outside the agency and reached out to industry, combatant commanders, military services, the joint staff, and others to help guide the assessment, Bunn said. The team considered the global supply chain real-world issues, from conflict to inflation to demand and forecast planning, among other factors.

One of the primary transformation imperatives of the new plan focuses on the DLA workforce, Bunn said.

"The people of DLA have been our absolute strength and the secret sauce of this agency for decades," he said. "We have very robust and high-performing IT systems and automation, (both) financial models that have served us well over time. But none of those things are worth a penny until you put people in the loop.

"That is why DLA has been very much focused on human capital and our people and culture for decades because we know that that is really what is going to drive change," Bunn continued. "That's where we source our best ideas, our innovation. That is where we see the teamwork and the leadership and building a culture that produces more than the sum of those parts."

According to Bunn, the agency has identified operating principles within the strategic plan that are aspirational but meant to develop into signature behaviors, said Bunn.

"It's how we want to act within the agency, as well as our engagement with stakeholders, our warfighting partners and industry," he said. "The ability to focus on readiness, a collaborative approach, knowing that there is not one solution that we can bring to bear that does not require some other stakeholder being a part of it."

Data-driven decisions are the hallmark of the strategic plan. While progress can be made using a person's expertise or gut feelings, in today's world, data is required to make sound decisions the agency needs, Bunn said.

"We sit on mounds and mounds of data … we haven't scratched the surface of the power that data contains.".Brad Bunn, Vice Director, Defense Logistics Agency

"We sit on mounds and mounds of data, and, in my view, we haven't scratched the surface of the power that data contains," he said. "I'm not talking about understanding what the past meant. I'm really talking about how you leverage that data into a particular future where we want to go."

DLA is focusing on intentional strategies to improve the workforce's understanding of data and how that information can inform the agency's decisions about various factors such as inflation, buying power and auditability.

"This is us being intentional about actually developing strategies around our supply chain," Bunn said. "We are building some strategic documents we haven't really done before at the agency level to assess the current health of our supply chains. Identify what gaps exist in light of the current environment and the future operating environment. Then building out effective strategies that, again, may have to do with how we do forecasting, planning and acquisition strategies and the need for additional partnerships, potentially with international partners."

Bunn emphasized that supply chain risk is not owned by one party. Multiple stakeholders in the end-to-end supply chain provide everything from raw materials to the manufacturing and production piece while including the financial aspects on top of that. He said the agency recognizes the risk in every layer of the chain and wants to understand it better.

The agency, Bunn said, sees the supply chain ecosystem as a team sport and wants to help rather than "ding" industry partners who fall short on performance. To build more resilience in the supply chain from a resourcing strategies standpoint, he said DLA needs help from its major suppliers. Events like the SEPRT or the annual Supply Chain Alliance Conference and Exhibition are in place to help generate more interest within the industry.

"We also want to hear your ideas about other acquisition strategies," he said. "What are we missing? Where can we help? Where can we maybe share some risk in order to drive these numbers away?"

With those questions hanging in the air, the roundtable moved into its' various panel discussions, presentations and a small business break-out session. DLA Aviation Strategic Acquisitions and Programs Director Janelle Allen, who led the event coordination along with her team and DLA's Supplier Operations Original Equipment Manufacturer Directorate, noted that the organization's stakeholders are essential to DLA Aviation's ability to support the warfighter.

"Our efforts to include our small business representatives and focus on establishing mentor-protegee relationships will be key to bolstering the supply chain," Allen said. "During our panel discussions, readiness and surge capabilities were raised as key issues. It takes time to understand and develop solutions to these complex issues, and the SEPRT sets us on a collective path to address them.

Michelle Kneher, the supplier relationship manager division chief in the Supplier Ops OEM Directorate, helped facilitate the event. As a first-time participant, she said she appreciated how the panels generated dialogue and interaction throughout the room, strengthening partnerships and paving the way to new strategic alliances.

"During the panels, participants emphasized transparent data sharing as a best practice, recognizing it as essential for fostering trust and getting to the best outcome for our warfighters," she said. "There were industry-level discussions and ideas shared about how the OEMs are investing in future employees in middle and high schools, as well as trade schools in areas local to the factories where finding skilled labor is becoming challenging"

Traditionally held annually at DLA Aviation, the SEPRT was last held in 2022 with social-distancing restrictions in place. However, the plan is to return to its pre-COVID schedule in 2025.

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