AFSO21 Lean Events Look at Mission Assurance Published Oct. 3, 2008 By Program Integration SMC Los Angeles Air Force Base -- Recently, the Space and Missile Systems Center and The Aerospace Corporation conducted two Mission Assurance AFSO21 lean events. Also involved in the effort were representatives from DCMA, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. This was the first time that the entire SMC Mission Assurance enterprise partnership gathered to work through the complex activities and processes that comprise Mission Assurance. The methodology used for the event looked at government only activities, FFRDC and SETA activities, and industry and governance models. Four teams were formed to work through mission assurance activities based on the period in the acquisition cycle: Acquisition Strategy to Contract Award, Program Baseline to I&T/Verification, Pre-launch to Disposal, and Overall integration. The Phase I event provided an enterprise view of Government-only processes while the Phase II event took a look at Industry processes. Phase II teams developed an enterprise view of Mission Assurance and began to develop an understanding of customer/industry expectations and the difficulties of Mission Assurance/Program Executability "Big Picture". Major processes were identified and basic interfaces mapped. Potential improvement actions were also identified and a go-forward plan identified with integration into other ongoing Mission Assurance efforts. The next step is to more closely examine transitional inputs and outputs and identify any gaps or redundant effort. Plans are to continue the Mission Assurance events in the winter of 2008 in order to define a desired future state for how Mission Assurance should be applied and practiced. The purpose is to identify specific Mission Assurance deliverables, potential contract mechanisms, planning and data requirements, flow down of Mission Assurance tasks to the contractor work breakdown structure, and discriminators/metrics for proposal evaluation and program execution. It is expected that the end result will be an effective but highly efficient process. These gains will be realized across all SMC wings.