BPM at Work: Improving Property Management Processes at a Large R&D Facility

NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center uses more than $525 million of technical and administrative accountable government property in the performance of its mission. The Logistics Management Division has responsibility for establishing tracking controls for this property through its entire life cycle using bar code technology and the NASA Equipment Management System (NEMS) central database, to include newly purchased equipment; fabricated equipment; user account inventories; user transfers and loans; shipping controls; and equipment excess, reutilization, schools donations and property sales. Equipment costing over $100,000 (capitalized) must also be entered into the Center's financial records and reconciled between the NEMS and General Ledger each year. The Division's processes were not fully achieving established performance metrics nor meeting customer service expectations...in some cases these deficiencies contributed to lost or unaccounted user equipment that must be surveyed. The Division established two BPM teams in November 2003 to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of these property control processes..to date these teams have identified and instituted numerous process improvements which have significantly improved customer service to our user community, improved property accountability controls, and now all associated performance metrics are achieving the Desired Quality Levels (DQL) requirements.