Area Of Interest 01 - Direct Vendor Delivery Tracking (DVDT).pdf

Area of Interest 01 – Direct Vendor Delivery Tracking (DVDT)

1.0 Problem Statement

Large contract administrators need accurate carrier information in near real time to confirm DLA customer's order status from shipment to receipt.

2.0 Background

As the nation’s combat logistics support agency, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) manages the end-to-end global defense supply chain – from raw materiel to end user disposition – for the five military services, 11 combatant commands, other federal, state and local agencies and partner and allied nations.

DLA’s mission is to “deliver readiness and lethality to the Warfighter Always and support our nation through quality, proactive global logistics.” To accomplish this mission, DLA has a staff of about 25,000 employees divided into multiple supply chains that contract for materiel and services across the military classes of supply: subsistence (food/water), clothing and textiles, bulk petroleum and other energy products, construction materiel and equipment, personal demand items, medical materiel and equipment, and repair parts for land, sea and air systems.

(Defense Logistics Agency, 2024)

Shipping data is a critical component of any supply chain and drives business decisions at every level of DLA operations. There is a high degree of variability in shipping data visibility and significant need for comprehensive, consolidated data that incorporates various leading-edge inputs to the shipment process like shipping status, shipping reference, shipping date, and delivery confirmation. The ability to collect, automate, and integrate this data closes a capability gap that impacts DLA’s wholesale and retail customers and is essential to enabling an effective DLA supply chain.

DLA’s business involves a substantial amount of freight and small parcel shipments, generating a substantial amount of internal and external data, including tracking of in-transit shipment from shipping vendors for tracking, which means there are use cases and beneficiaries in nearly every part of DLA’s business. For example, one supply chain had ~160,000 direct vendor / customer direct delivery orders over 12 months. ~97 percent of those delivery orders were small parcel.

Improving availability of comprehensive shipping data for materiel that is shipping direct from the vendor to the point of need is required and must be leveraged to the maximum extent practicable. These critical assets are essential to Warfighter readiness and logistics operations.

3.0 Desired Solution Features

3.1 Interoperable with various business systems such as but not limited to SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC), SAP S/4HANA and Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) without manual intervention (i.e., environment agnostic).

3.2 Unify order and shipping data from disparate sources such as but not limited to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) 856 Advanced Shipment Notices, Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), EDI 214 Transportation Carrier Shipment Status web and provide streamline data feed enabling shipment visibility status to support auditability in accountable systems of record.

3.3 Provide evidence (i.e. Electronic Proof of Delivery, complete delivery data feed, geofence etc.) that confirms and verifies correct delivery of material for reporting.

3.4 Hosting - Initial prototypes could leverage vendor hosted environments. This is dependent on technical details of the hosting environment and cybersecurity controls in place. NOTE: Any long-term hosting in a vendor environment (I.e. Software as a Service SaaS) would require FedRAMP authorization. Additionally, DLA operates private cloud environments leveraging major providers (Azure, AWS, etc.) that can host vendor solutions once appropriately vetted. Offerors are encouraged to submit white papers that outline how their solution is currently hosted and describe the level of effort to meet DoD cybersecurity standards.

3.5 Enable pathway to implement Application Programming Interface (API) architecture, adoption and connection.

4.0 Project Expectations

4.1 Initial prototype would rapidly develop and demonstrate 12-16 weeks from award data capture and data integration to meet objectives.

4.2 Near real time visibility is slightly delayed (hours) but enables timely decision making without the unrealistic expectation of true real-time.

4.3 Carrier information at minimum data will contain carrier name, carrier reference, on shipment date and delivery date. Direct Vendor Delivery (DVD) / Customer Direct (CD) shipments are contract related orders that are linked to a customer requisition/order.

These orders can go on shipments scheduled by the Vendor (FOB Destination) or by DLA (FOB Origin).

5.0 Intellectual Property

At a minimum, DLA anticipates acquiring Intellectual Property:

5.1 In any software delivered, commercial licenses customarily provided to the public; and,

5.2 Technical data on the solution:

5.2.1 Necessary for operation, maintenance, or training; and,

5.2.2 That describes the required overall physical, functional, and performance characteristics (along with the qualification requirements, if applicable) of an item, component, or process to the extent necessary to permit identification of physically and functionally interchangeable items. This is often called ‘form, fit, and function’ data (see 48 C.F.R. § 252.227- 7015(a)(3)).

6.0 Warranty

DLA anticipates acquiring a warranty customary provided to the public lasting at least one year from DLA acceptance of the delivered solution.

7.0 Submission Instructions

Solutions Briefs are due no later than March 25, 2024 5:00PM EDT. Please submit the Solution Briefs via email to Eugene Marrone at Eugene.Marrone@dla.mil and Michelle Harrison at Michelle.Harrison@dla.mil