Using Value-Focused Thinking as an Alternative Means of Opportunity Assessment for Strategic Sourcing Applications

In recent years, the Federal Government has attempted to utilize strategic sourcing to reduce acquisitions expenses. Currently accepted best practices for strategic sourcing developed in the private sector fail to account for the diverse and unique set of objectives present in public sector acquisitions. Value Focused Thinking was used to develop a hierarchy of values and objectives for the Air Force Civil Engineer Commodity Council CECC strategic sourcing program. This hierarchy represents the full range of program objectives, and was used to develop a value function useful for systematically evaluating service and commodity contract areas for strategic sourcing potential.