The American Competitiveness Institute (ACI) in Philadelphia, PA received a $99,999,000 indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract for a Benchmarking and Best Practices Center of Excellence. Work will be performed in Philadelphia, PA next to the airport, and is expected to be complete in June 2013. This contract was competitively procured under solicitation N00014-08-R-0001 by The Office of Naval Research in Arlington, VA (N00014-08-D-0758).
The government’s regional Electronics Manufacturing Productivity Facility (EMPF) was privatized in 1995, and is now operated by ACI as the US Navy’s center of excellence in electronics manufacturing. The center focuses of industry/ academia/ government partnerships to develop, apply and transfer new electronics manufacturing technologies and processes. ACI lists BAE Systems, L3 Communications, and DRS among defense sector clients who have taken advantage of their services. ACI also operates the U.S. Army’s Electronics Sustainment Center (AESC), which is focused on a different mission: inserting commercial off the shelf (COTS) components into existing military electronics to extend their useful life, make maintenance easier, and reduce costs.
The purpose of this particular contract is in line with EMPF’s mission: “to identify, validate, benchmark, and facilitate the dissemination (sharing) of best-in-class practices, processes, methodologies, systems, and pre-competitiveness technologies. In doing so, enhance and promote communications, corporation, integration, and interdependency across the defense industry that will result in improvements in affordability and performance of defense platforms and weapon systems.”