Accelerated Logistics: Streamlining the Army's Supply Chain

Abstract

In June 1998, Vice President of the United States Al Gore and the National Partnership for Reinventing Government presented a team of Army logisticians and RAND analysts the "Hammer Award" in recognition of a great accomplishment: making Army logistics work better and cost less. Through its Velocity Management (VM) initiative, the Army has dramatically streamlined its supply chain, cutting order and ship times for repair parts by nearly two-thirds nationwide and over 75 percent at several of the major Forces Command (FORSCOM) installations. For decades, the Army logistics system was based on massive stockpiles of supplies and weapon systems, many of them prepositioned "just in case." While this system was world-class for supporting a Cold War army, it became increasingly less effective and unaffordable for the current force projection army. Started in 1995, the Army's VM initiatve sought to improve the responsiveness, reliability, and efficiency of this outdated logistics system. The wholesale order and ship process is a critical part of the Army's supply chain-filling nearly 60 percent of all retail issues for repair parts. During the Velocity Management baseline period from July 1994 to June 1995, order and ship times were lengthy with a long, variable distribution. Army mechanics would wait on average a month for spare parts from distant supply depots in order to repair a "down" weapon system. Delays occurred in all segments of the process, and response times varied from month to month. VM recognized that achieving dramatic, continuous, and irreversible improvement required a revolutionary shift in thought and action. An organizational structure comprising senior Army leadership, site and process improvement teams, and continuing analytic support from RAND catalyzed the institutionalization of this cultural change, while VM's Define-Measure-Improve methodology sustained it.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA379490

Entities

People

  • Mark Y. Wang

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Combat Readiness
  • Commerce
  • Deployment
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Governments
  • Logistics
  • Middle East
  • Motivation
  • National Guard
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Spare Parts
  • Supply Chain
  • Supply Depots
  • United States
  • United States Transportation Command
  • Weapon Systems

Readers

  • Industrial Economics
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.