IUID Blog

As I write this entry, I’m traveling back from a very large US manufacturer and supplier to the Department of Defense. I’ll remain vague in describing the company to protect the innocent, however, it’s safe to say that they are in a business that requires an extraordinary amount of precision and discipline. As we prepared for the site visit to this company, it became obvious to me the commonality between implementing IUID (Item Unique Identification, although I’ll refer to it as UID going forward) and a manufacturing operation much like the one we were about to visit. What’s the common thread? Making critical decisions based upon precision data. In their business, accuracy is critical. Low to zero tolerances are the norm. Fast forward to the meeting and our discussions quickly moved beyond the UID compliance obligation, DFARs 252.211-7003, and MIL STD 130N discussions and into benefits of UID to their organization. I was impressed with how quickly this organization acknowledged UID benefits to precisely and accurately tracking parts through manufacturing, production, final assembly as well as back through maintenance and repair cycles. All facets of the company were represented including materials management, maintenance, logistics, supply chain, contracts, and IT. Without question, this represented a very diverse group to tackle the UID initiative laid out by DoD.  (Read More)

As anticipated last week’s UID Forum had heavy attendance with more than 900 participants. This shows a steadily growing awareness of UID and a groundswell of implementation. (Read More)

Recent changes to all property bearing contracts administrated by the DCMA are having an effect on government furnished property (GFP) property managers. There is movement away from high level aggregate reporting of government property (GFP) TOWARD item specific reporting that falls in line with DFARS 252.211-7007. This is illustrated by the Jan 11, 2010 Memorandum from Director, Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy (DPAP) Shay Assad in which he calls upon the Directors of virtually all DoD procurement and contracts agencies to formulate a detailed set of milestones for IUID implementation within six months. (Read More)

There is a rule of thumb in software development that for every $1 spent to develop original software code an additional $3 is spent to maintain the software. In other words, software that costs $2 million to develop will eventually cost $6 million. There are many reasons for this, including routine maintenance, but modifications that are required due to user requests as well as operating system and infrastructure changes are to be expected. (Read More)