In the late 1990’s the US Air Force had a strategic initiative called “Flexible Sustainment,” and the pilot aircraft program for introducing this initiative was its C-17 airlifter program. The central idea behind the initiative was that a better partnership between the Air Force and private industry (especially the suppliers of the major airframes) to
After years of difficulty developing its product, a defense contractor finally had the high quality product it had promised the U.S. Government years earlier. Unfortunately, even after the production of several units, its manufacturing cost was far too high. The unit cost was finally starting to come down smartly, but the contractor didn’t know for
When the new CFO of a manufacturing company took his position in early 1996, fellow executives bombarded him with complaints about the cost estimating and accounting departments. Among them was confusion over how much the company saved by outsourcing parts and services. The CFO asked Ventana to join an ad hoc advisory team he was
For NASA, Ventana developed the Project Manager Learning Sim: a training tool containing a simple project-dynamics model, giving users access to the model via a game-like user interface. The Sim was developed in order to enable users to discover for themselves several fundamental insights into managing real world projects, the most fundamental of which is
The Electronic Systems Division (ESD) of the United States Air Force hired Ventana to create a model for contract management and control. The objective was to make accurate forecasts of project outcomes using only the limited contract data provided to the Government by private contractors. In its first application, the Ventana model accurately predicted that
Because of the importance to spares management to the Flexible Sustainment program being proposed by Boeing to the US Air Force for the C-17 program (see Making the Case for Privatizing a Government Function), the task of creating an information and analysis system was put out for competitive procurement and the industry leader in logistics
An aircraft manufacturer hired Ventana to discover why the firm appeared to lose production control whenever it had its greatest marketing successes. Ventana approached the problem by constructing a simulation model of the company based on discussions with managers and engineers as well as company operating plans and reports. When Ventana tested the model against
The Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) provides annual air transportation research and development funding guidance to its participating federal agencies, to help coordinate their investments and activities toward the development of NextGen, the Next Generation Air Transport System. Ventana developed a quantitative framework, described in the paper available below for download, to help JPDO
For the US Federal Avaiation Administration, Ventana developed a comprehensive National Airspace System (NAS) Strategy Simulator. The simulator provides a framework to evaluate infrastructure and regulatory strategy. To achieve realism without getting bogged down in massive detail, the model aggregates participants into communities, each acting in its own interests. The model takes a high-level approach
