On Oct. 1, the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) delegated a new program within the Quality Assurance discipline: Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM). SCRM focuses on strategies, tools, techniques and guidance that generate knowledge about supplier risk and creates approaches for maximizing successful Quality outcomes throughout NASA’s supply chain for mission hardware.

These approaches include

• Developing the methodologies for gauging NASA supply chain health
• Enhancing the agency’s process for government contract Quality Assurance
• Increasing program management insight and accountability pertaining to supply chain risk
• Providing training on Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and NASA FAR supplement clauses
• Driving greater uses of risk-based decision-making into Quality surveillance practices
• Providing leadership to the Defense Contract Management Agency and support contractors conducting government oversight
• Redesigning standard NASA Forms
• Providing leadership for programs’ and projects’ execution of supplier audits and assessments
• Enhancing processes for cyber security threat, fraud and counterfeit part avoidance programs

“I’m excited for the opportunity to stand up this new program,” said Valle Kauniste, SCRM delegated program manager, located at Johnson Space Center. “It’s an important time for the agency to be focused on these areas to ensure accountability and compliance throughout our supply chain. This will allow for early risk identification and communication of supply chain issues to program management and leaders and help provide the technical facts needed in decision-making throughout the entire life cycle of critical mission hardware development.”   

Kauniste and the SCRM program are responsible for managing the Supplier Assessment System database* and for working closely with the agencywide Digital Transformation teams to develop enterprise-level SCRM data acquisition, analytics and planning tools to track, trend, analyze, communicate and manage supply chain risk.

“There’s always a lot of work to be done when setting up a new program like this, but we know where we’re going and what we need to do,” said Kauniste. “In these first few months, we plan to really focus on developing an effective and efficient strategy roadmap for SCRM. These are exciting times for NASA. We are going to the Moon in 2024 and working closely with our suppliers is going to be a crucial attribute of our success.”

Questions about the program can be directed to Kauniste.

*2021 update: To modernize the Supplier Assessment System (SAS) for performance and cost efficiency, in 2021, NASA moved the database into SCIC, the new SCRM platform. NASA employees can request access via the NASA Access Management System.