Lean Now-Using a Research Community to Understand Change in the Aquisition Enterprise

Abstract : Members of the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) consortium have joined to pool experience and expertise to accelerate the adoption of Lean practices in military acquisition through an initiative called Lean Now. Lean Now has demonstrated that the concept of industry and government teaming for focused interventions can produce savings and accelerate change in the acquisition process. It also represents a systematic change method that lends itself to data collection and theory development. This paper outlines some of the findings to date, as well as implications for using such a model for research on the military acquisition system.