Foreword

In today’s increasingly global economy, it is imperative that organizations discover, sustain, and improve methods that consistently provide the highest quality products and services at the lowest possible cost. In the aerospace industry, this necessity is more critical than ever. Our nation faces a multitude of challenges, from preventing terrorist attacks to fighting wars on multiple fronts against enemies both foreign and domestic. Industry is adapting by incorporating new technology, becoming more agile, and building the flexibility to combat both physical and cyber threats against our customers and ourselves. It is essential that defense contractors employ methods for the entire lifecycle of ever more complex systems to optimize cost, schedule, technical, and workmanship standards and focus on enhancing the warfighter’s ability to succeed the first time, every time.

Northrop Grumman Corporation and our Aerospace Sector are extremely proud to provide the nation with aerospace and defense capabilities. We strive to continually improve our ability to meet and exceed our customers’ expectations and deliver best-in-class products and services. Specifically, in our role as the Prime Integration Contractor for the Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) weapon system, the majority of our products are acquired from sub-contractors, suppliers, and sub-tier suppliers. We partner with our customer and our entire supply chain to enhance the reliability, availability, and sustainability of the weapon system, while ensuring requirements are accurately defined, allocated, maintained, and realized. Through this team dynamic, we have updated, enhanced, integrated, and maintained our nation’s ability to provide a highly robust and available deterrent against nuclear attack on the United States or its allies.

CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ) enables a predictable, consistent, and reliable process for defining the requirements, defining an acquisition strategy, and capturing the best sources. The abilities to identify the right sources, execute properly defined subcontracts, and validate critical requirements are key contributors to ensure customers’ critical needs are satisfied. Our acquisition processes are the cornerstone by which we have managed a wide array of requirements and complex technical solutions to deliver high quality, robust products. Our success is largely due to our implementation of fundamental CMMI concepts within our processes. By achieving CMMI-ACQ maturity level 5, our customers have confidence in our processes as well as our products.

I encourage you to read this book with one goal in mind—continual improvement of your organization’s acquisition performance. This book can guide you to improve every tier of your supply chain and thereby improve the products and services you ultimately deliver to your customers.

—Anthony W. Spehar
VP Missile Systems (MXS)
Strike & Surveillance Systems Division
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
Clearfield, Utah