Harry Kahn

For the past 2 ½ years HKA has been closely following important congressionally mandated changes to DoD Life Cycle Management policies.  Under Secretary of Defense Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (USD(AT&L)) Directive-Type Memorandum (DTM) 10-015, “Requirements for Life Cycle Management and Product Support” was originally signed 7 October 2010.  What Does It Mean To You? In …

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The Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (AT&L), Frank Kendall has laid out several key DoD Acquisition Community initiatives in the January – February 2013 issue of “Defense ATL Magazine.”  Given the current federal budget situation, these initiatives will have significant impact on HKA clients and readers of this blog. First, AT&L’s “Better …

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A Brief History: DoD has implemented important acquisition policy initiatives in the last several years.  In particular, in October 2009, President Obama signed the Fiscal Year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 111-84).  The legislation contained a provision in Section 805 entitled “Life Cycle Management and Product Support” requiring: The Secretary of Defense to …

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Cost efficiencies, throughout a process, can be gained by careful process improvement analysis. Normally this analysis reveals that outsourcing of specific aspects of operations to organizations that specialize in those services or products has provided substantial benefit. These benefits accrue not only in cost reduction, but also in quality of product and timeliness of delivery. …

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If you are an OEM selling to the Federal Government and especially if you are selling to the DOD you know that developing and delivering acceptable technical documentation can be a challenge. Specifications that govern the content, arrangement and electronic format of operations, maintenance and other manuals as well as requirements for logistical information and …

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As part of HKA’s on-going efforts to stay abreast of DoD acquisition and contracting policies, we came upon two recent additions to the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) ACQuipedia website: 1) Solicitations, and 2) Pre-Award Surveys.  The ACQuipedia articles are provided in their entirety below: DEFINITION A solicitation is any request to submit offers or quotations to …

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HKA is pleased to announce that Mr. Greg Cartrette has joined the company as our Commercial Business Development Liaison.  Greg served in the US Army and is a highly motivated individual with 13 years of successful business development experience. Greg’s responsibilities include maintaining and growing relationships with commercial customers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). His …

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Defense Acquisition University (DAU) Fort Belvoir, VA 5-7 June 2012 Harry Kahn Associates had the opportunity to attend the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Materiel Readiness) sponsored PSM Conference at DAU onboardFortBelvoir recently. The theme of the conference was “Integrating Government and Industry for Improved Product Support” and was aimed at providing affordable sustainment solutions …

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Is my current documentation sufficient for my end users? How can I document and control “versioning” when I sell highly customizable equipment? How do I provide manuals that are compliant with my customer’s specification? How do I standardize my vendor manuals to a generally accepted content and format spec? Is there too much “stuff” in …

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As the Department of Defense (DoD) increases its emphasis on purchasing COTS equipment their requirement for Mil-Spec supporting documentation is also increasing. When selling equipment to the DoD, manufacturers are faced with the daunting task of ensuring that their product documentation complies with military maintenance philosophies, provisioning and specifications. Often, OEM documentation does not provide …

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