DLA Office of Operations Research and Resource Analysis
When a previous Defense Logistics Agency director wanted to compare the agency’s performance in stocking meals, ready-to-eat, for warfighters during Operation Iraqi Freedom to its ability to do the same during the Gulf War, he went to a DLA office in Richmond, Va., to get the answer.
The DLA Office of Operations Research and Resource Analysis crunched data from databases that preceded the Enterprise Business System to come up with the answer: There were enough MREs in Iraq at the time to keep every resident of Salt Lake City fed for a month.
“We were able to say that there were customers out there who were now complaining about what they were getting to eat, not whether they had something to eat,” DORRA Director Glenn Petrina said, emphasizing the improvement in MRE availability from one war to the next.
DORRA is DLA’s in-house consultant, providing information and analysis to the agency’s decision makers and action officers, Petrina said. Using databases that go back more than 20 years, interviews with employees and an experienced team of operations research and management analysts, the office provides data and recommendations for leaders across the agency.
“One general said DORRA is the 50-pound brain in the agency,” said Larry Vadala, DORRA’s business manager. “We are able to give them insight and be an honest broker into what the data tells us. Without our analysis, many of our clients would not be able to make informed decisions.”
The most important function DORRA provides is helping analyze mission requirements for DLA’s many organizations, Vadala said. The office uses a variety of methods, including interviews, statistical modeling and comparisons to similar organizations, to get the answers the agency needs.
The agency’s recent establishment of DLA Intelligence is an example of a time DORRA’s management analysts helped agency leaders decide what to do, Petrina said. In addition to conducting interviews with staff to discuss the organization’s missions, functions and responsibilities, DORRA looked at the intelligence capabilities of similar commands – U.S. Transportation Command, Army Materiel Command and the Air Force’s air logistics centers among them – to help deduce how DLA Intelligence should be staffed to fulfill its mission, he said.
“Our staffing model looks at the jobs you’re doing or activities you’re performing, how long they take, and whether you have enough people to do that mission based upon current staffing levels,” he said. “We also look at organizations and how they’re arranged and make recommendations about how they could be more efficient based on how they’ve organized.”
DORRA’s staff develops tools that help the organization get the answers agency leaders require. In 2009, DORRA developed the System of Integrated Metrics Analysis Model, an inventory simulation that evaluates the relationships between measurements across the agency, Petrina said. The SIMAN model allows analysts to make changes to variables involved in logistics planning, including data such as asset location, lead times needed for specific items and inventory levels. Once those variables are changed, SIMAN allows DORRA analysts to see how those changes affect order fulfillment, demand accuracy, material availability and inventory turnover
“SIMAN has been used in various analyses dealing with forecast ability, inventory changes and management objectives,” Petrina said. “It has given senior leaders data needed to make informed decisions throughout the Agency.
DORRA also played a key role in the sentencing of Roger Day Jr., a former DLA Aviation supplier who created a multiyear fraud scheme in which he set up a series of phony vendors that would bid for and win DLA contracts, Petrina said. DORRA, analyzing its historical database, was able to measure Day’s actual and intended damages, which came to $4.4 million and $11.2 million, respectively. Day was ultimately sentenced to 105 years in prison.
“Well done. Nice work on finally getting this guy,” DLA Director Navy Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek told a gathering of DLA employees involved in Day’s conviction in January. “This conviction sends a great message to others who might try to sell us counterfeit parts.”
Each of DORRA’s more than 60 analysts provides about 1,500 hours of analysis for the agency each year, Vadala said. The research is prioritized regularly with most DLA organizations, including the agency’s primary-level field activities and DLA Logistics Operations. Before each fiscal year, he said, DORRA puts out a call to the agency’s multiple activities, offices and commands asking their leaders what types of analysis projects they need. Coming into fiscal 2012, the agency’s leaders asked for more than 120,000 hours of support, and prioritization was needed to winnow that down to the 85,000 hours the office calculated it could provide.
“Once you work with them for a while, you understand when they’re asking for more than they need,” Petrina said. “We work with them throughout the year to figure out what we can do. Invariably, new requirements come up and we have to adjust somewhere. Everyone has a discussion about what they really need and what they can give up or contract out.”
When a research project comes along that DORRA can’t support, the office helps its customers work with contractors to get the analysis they need, Vadala said. The staff can help translate a requirement into the language needed for contracting and offers administrative support once a contract is awarded.
“We have three contract vehicles they can use to get their requirements on contract more quickly,” he said. “These three contract vehicles have a ceiling of about $7 million a year available for customers to use, so if a customer says, ‘I really need to contract this out because you can’t help me,’ there’s a good chance they can use our help to get it.”
Petrina said the ultimate benefit DORRA offers the agency is the expertise its analysts bring to the projects they work on.
“We are experienced in DLA. Most of our analysts have been here for a while,” he said. “We know the nomenclature and the territory. We know who bought what, where it came from, where it went, what it cost, and how often if was purchased. We’re the in-house consultants for DLA and feel like we bring a value to the agency it can’t readily get elsewhere.”