Public sector enterprise resource planning

Thomas R. Gulledge and Rainer A. Sommer George Mason University Enterprise Engineering Laboratory, MS 2E4 Fairfax, Virginia 22030-4444 USA http://www.pac.gmu.edu/ Summary The management of the Department of Defense (DoD) enterprise must change. Since 1989, the DoD has “chronically under-funded its installations’ base support services and facilities as evidenced by an increasing backlog of maintenance and a migration of funds from mission accounts to provide essential base support services.” Years of under funding have led to a wide gap between enterprise support requirements and resources. This gap has been estimated to be a wide as $5 billion, just for DoD installations. This leaves few options: • Make significant cuts in capabilities and infrastructures. This would close the gap, but unfortunately history has shown that it is easier to reduce capability than infrastructure. • Add additional dollars to close the gap. While it is true that the politicians are already discussing possibilities for spending future budget surpluses, it is unlikely that this alternative would be realized. • Make cuts in some items, but do some things smarter, so that effectiveness is maintained while cost is reduced. Private sector firms have faced similar choices. As their market shares were evaporating, they selected the third option to help them regain competitive advantage. Their cost structures were bloated, so they used an approach that is similar to that described in this paper, to extract resources from their infrastructure. The intent was to