Outsourcing military maintenance - Risks and success factors
Publish date: 2007-03-15
Report number: FOI-R--2247--SE
Pages: 46
Written in: Swedish
Keywords:
- outsourcing
- military maintenance
- logistics
- ppp
Abstract
Maintenance and logistic activities are closely integrated with almost all parts of the Armed forces and material processes. As a result of this integration, outsourcing of activities that may seem marginal, but is of vital importance for core activities, may lead to domino effects and cause problems for the core activities as well as the possibilities to control them and follow them up. When outsourcing decisions establish frames in terms of time and money, the gathered risks may be larger than expected. Risks therefore may be seen as a degree of freedom, coupled to requirements concerning economy and time. Assuming peacetime activities, outsourcing has the greatest potential for being profitable within areas that are: 1) Delimitable, possible to specify requirements for, measure and follow up. 2) Interrimistic, temporary solutions, intended to be replaced after a finite period of time. 3) Gives the supplier possibilities to use resources more efficiently, e.g. by having more customers. Division of risks for industry considered strategically important by logistic orders, is an ingredient that complicates further analysis of the questions at issue. One problem is that maintenance volumes might be too small, as some parts need to be kept by the Armed forces for first line and to some extent education. This implies that cases may be hard to assess separated from each other.