More than 30 individuals, teams and organizations were honored with the Fiscal Year 2017 Value Engineering Achievement Award in a ceremony in the Pentagon Auditorium today.
“With formal [Defense Department] programs for value engineering dating back to 1954 in the Navy's Bureau of Ships, value engineering has played an integral and enduring role in accomplishing the DoD mission to provide a lethal joint force, to defend the security of our nation, and sustain American influence abroad,” said Kristen Baldwin, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for systems engineering, keynote speaker for the event.
National Defense Strategy
In the summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis identifies his top priorities to generate and sustain the U.S. military advantage, she said, which are: building a more lethal force, strengthening alliances and attracting new partnerships, and bringing business reforms to DoD.
In the area of DoD reform, Baldwin told the award recipients their personal and team initiatives in using value engineering have “kept pace with the direction to change our mindset, to change our culture and our management systems in the department, and to modernize our systems and capabilities, and create efficiencies while doing so. Your assured steps provide necessary functions to our forces while achieving those cost…