Kudos to the many of you who have taken full advantage of the updated Life Cycle Logistics Community of Practice (LOG CoP) and the Performance Based Logistics Community of Practice (PBL CoP). These two sites continue to provide a wealth of important resources not only for DoD Product Support Managers (PSM) and Life Cycle Logisticians, but also to the broader defense acquisition workforce and our defense industry partners.  These and other DAU learning assets continue to serve as a resource to support you in the daily execution of your jobs, as well as to assist you with your professional development.

As last year's deployment of the PBL CoP in part highlights, the Department of Defense has placed significant emphasis on development and successful implementation of outcome-based product support strategies, more commonly referred to as Performance Based Logistics (PBL). The importance of this cost saving, performance enhancing initiative has been reiterated and reinforced in a number of ways recently, including but by no means limited to:

·         ASD(L&MR) November 22, 2013 “Performance Based Logistics Comprehensive Guidance” policy memorandum

·         USD(AT&L) April 24, 2013 “Implementation Directive for Better Buying Power 2.0 – Achieving Greater Efficiency and Productivity in Defense Spending” policy memorandum

·         USD(AT&L) May 14, 2012 "Endorsement of Next-Generation Performance-Based Logistics Strategies" memorandum

·         Enclosures 2 and 6 of the November 25, 2013 Interim DoD Instruction 5000.02 “Operation of the Defense Acquisition System”

·         Updates to Defense Acquisition Guidebook (DAG) Chapter 5

·         The DoD Product Support Manager’s (PSM) Guidebook

An additional, although perhaps lesser known resource I would also call your attention to is the comprehensive “PBL & Product Support Articles & Reports” repository, part of the PBL CoP Reference Library. This site contains links to nearly 300 articles and reports on the subject of PBL and Product Support, organized sequentially by year. Whether you are doing research, searching for best practices, striving to maintain professional currency, or are merely seeking to understand what PBL experts and thought leaders across government, industry, and academia are saying, this site serves as an comprehensive repository of such articles. Encourage you to check it out.