SRNS Supply Chain Procurement Celebrates Record Year
Friday, December 22nd, 2023
The Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) Supply Chain Procurement (SCP) group is celebrating a successful year of achievements, particularly in the areas of on-time delivery (OTD), procurement commitments, and cost savings — all while delivering improved supply chain solutions to reduce supplier risk at the Savannah River Site (SRS).
“Going into fiscal year (FY) 2023, the SCP leadership team built a comprehensive plan to improve processes and systems, invest in our talent, and overdrive results,” said Dave Dietz, SRNS Senior Procurement Director of Supply Chain. “It’s been a record year with outstanding outcomes for the entire department.”
OTD is the supplier’s delivery of material to support the Site’s projects and missions. According to Lisa Tanner, SRNS Senior Manager of Supply Chain Excellence and Small Business Liaison Officer, the SCP OTD averaged 84.2% prior to FY23.
“This OTD score was ‘good enough,’ as it met the requirements of our customer which is a minimum of 84%, but we decided to take it a step further for our customers’ benefit and increased our internal goal to 90% OTD,” said Tanner. “By the end of FY23, our team reached our goal of 90%, the highest performance SRS has seen in more than a decade.”
“The Risk Management group revamped the SRA process to better evaluate supplier risk and overall
viability,” said Tanner. “SRA is a compilation of a supplier’s financial health, corporate linkages,
Tanner believes these ambitious goals are especially important for supporting Department of Energy (DOE) missions. "An agile, reliable supply base that delivers exceptional on-time delivery is key to supporting missions of national importance,” Tanner said. “OTD is one of the many ways the SCP group supports the future of SRS."
The SRNS SCP team continued to reach record-setting performance levels through new procurement commitments. SCP awarded $1.2 billion in new commitments, an increase of over $600 million (92%) from FY22. Breaking all previous records, SRNS committed $732 million (59%) of its subcontracted work to small business. These new commitments achieved key milestones deadlines for all 50 critical procurements supporting performance-based incentives for Environmental Management (EM) missions.
“The key to SRNS expansion and economic growth has always been to support our surrounding community and small businesses,” said Jay Johnson, SRNS Deputy Vice President, Contracts and SCM. “We consistently look for ways to maximize their capabilities and impact at SRS so that we can further DOE missions.”
Two major improvement initiatives, the Supplier Risk Assessment (SRA) and ‘Project Revolution’, were rolled out by SCP in FY23 to reduce supplier risk, accelerate procurement, identify gaps, and remove barriers to success.
import history, counterfeit indicators and labor practices. By using this new tool, we can continuously monitor
key suppliers and analyze the data to assess SRNS’ risk when doing business with a supplier. This is a huge breakthrough in not only tremendously reducing risk but saving us a lot of time in the process.”
SRNS Supply Chain Procurement began a multi-phase initiative known as the Supplier Risk Assessment. Implementation of these phases will develop a capability to predict vendor success based on historical data and continuous monitoring.
Despite facing global supply chain shortages and an increase in scope, the SCP Policy and Compliance Assurance group led a grassroots effort, allowing the workforce to identify opportunities for improvement to streamline SRNS acquisition processes. After one year of development, the ‘Project Revolution’ initiative was established to remove unnecessary steps and processes to accelerate mission-critical acquisitions.
“To accomplish Project Revolution, SCP senior leaders analyzed six core processes with the goal of accelerating procurement, identifying gaps and removing barriers to success,” said Elizabeth Wooten, SRNS Manager, Policy and Compliance Assurance. “Over 80 improvement ideas were identified with a specific resolution assigned to each, which dramatically reduced implementation time for changes in policy, procedures and requirements.”
The SRNS Supplier Risk Management team reviews the workflow design of the new supplier risk and viability program.
Leading cost-savings initiatives across all DOE-EM sites, the SRNS SCP team far exceeded the savings goal of $12 million. At the end of FY23, the team reached a total of $27.6 million in cost-savings; money that can be returned to many programs that support DOE objectives.
“One key factor in securing this amount of savings was through the onboarding and training of over 40 procurement professionals in this year alone,” said Jess Robson, SRNS SCM Training Program Manager. “We offered guided development and multi-faceted training programs tailored to meet the needs of our new buyers short- and long-term goals.”
In 2022, the SCP team provided in-person training for buyers to better understand the Supply Chain Management Center (SCMC) portal, which offers pre-negotiated quantity discounts and agreements.
SRNS monitored the Buyer’s use of the SCMC platform to ensure the best procurement method was being utilized throughout the year. Nearly 60% of the SCMC agreements were issued to small businesses, exceeding the FY23 goal.
“We celebrate and recognize the records set by SRNS Procurement in FY23, but we must tap into that momentum to go even farther in 2024,” Dietz continued. “Our focus will remain on strong project execution while we shift gears to expand in early project planning, collaborations with our customers and project teams, and the number of trainings offered for critical skill development.”
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, a Fluor and HII partnership company, is responsible for the management and operations of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, located near Aiken, South Carolina.
