Photo By James Foehl | 210902-N-PX557-0138 MECHANICSBURG, Pa. (September 2, 2021) Capt. Gene Cash,...... read more read more
(MECHANICSBURG, Pa.) – Capt. Gene Cash, commanding officer, Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) Business Systems Center (BSC), participated virtually in a moderated Defense Customer Panel discussion during the 5th annual Appian Government event in Washington, D.C., November 16.
The panel discussion served as an opportunity for participants to hear first-hand accounts from Navy leadership on recent efforts to accelerate and modernize information technology (IT) solutions within their respective organizations.
“We’ve seen a larger demand for the solutions we provide to NAVSUP and the Navy, ultimately in support of Navy readiness,” said Cash. “Our command has been very busy trying to meet the demand of our mission partners, our customers, and our leadership to provide those solution sets.”
NAVSUP BSC provides the Navy with information systems support through the design, development, and maintenance of systems in the functional areas of logistics, supply chain management, transportation, finance, and accounting.
“I think automation is the future. We have a big mandate to be auditable, and part of that is understanding where our material is, what we have in our plants and our storerooms, and that’s very tough to do with people power,” said Cash. “One level of automation we’re using is robots that go around, and using radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, will inventory the items we care about and have to keep accountable.”
Personnel using manual processes and printed spreadsheets to inventory items can be both labor-intensive and error-prone, even for the most dedicated professionals. Inventory accuracy and auditability is expected to improve with the use of robots and RFID tags.
“We’re going to try and leverage that technology to really get a good handle on where all our material assets are and how to keep them as up to date as possible,” said Cash.
Cash also noted the importance of collaboration with partner organizations to accelerate the implementation of unattended robotic process automations.
“When we hear an agency has an unattended bot, we start talking to them more. We ask if we can borrow that idea or leverage that authority to operate to put that unattended bot into our operation to support our processes,” said Cash. “We’ll happily partner with anybody who has figured it out better than us if they’re willing to share, and we do the same for other partner organizations.”
As a mainly working capital-funded command, Cash reflected on the challenge of maintaining a stable funding stream to continue work and projects that deliver IT capability.
“How do we get through it? We communicate a lot. We talk with our resource sponsors, we talk with our comptrollers, we talk with our industry partners, and we make sure we’re all on the same page. If it’s a high enough priority, we have to articulate the message properly - what bad will happen if we don’t continue with the effort or get the funding - and we can work through that roadblock without too much disruption to the effort.”
Cash voiced that the strength of NAVSUP BSC’s recent efforts is their personnel’s ability to accept and manage change.
“Change management is probably harder than technology change or management,” said Cash. “What I’ve been greatly impressed with by our organization is the willingness and the ability of our folks to deliver technology solutions and capability. I’ve found that our people have really been willing to embrace the technology and the opportunities to apply that technology to the mission,” he said.
During the panel discussion, Cash was joined by Capt. Matthew Bearn, director, Technology, Operations and Plans for the Office of the Judge Advocate General, Naval Legal Service Command Headquarters, and Sabrina Lemire, command information officer, Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic, who also shared first-hand accounts on recent IT efforts within their respective organizations.
Other guest speakers for the event included James “Hondo” Geurts, former assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition; Andrew Mansfield, technical director at Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic; and Matt Calkins, Appian founder, and chief executive officer.
For more information about NAVSUP BSC, visit https://www.navsup.navy.mil/public/navsup/bsc/.
| Date Taken: | 11.16.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 11.18.2021 09:55 |
| Story ID: | 409564 |
| Location: | MECHANICSBURG, PA, US |
| Web Views: | 267 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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