Supplying the Warfighter-Is Surplus an Answer?

Abstract

This report addresses whether DOD policies and practices related to the procurement of surplus are effective and efficient. In order to limit the scope of the research, an analysis of the Defense Logistics Agency s (DLA s) Defense Supply Center Richmond s (DSCR s) acquisition workload was selected for analyses. DLA is responsible for 86 percent of all DOD consumable items and 55 percent of all federally stocked items. DLA annually provides DOD and other Federal agencies with 4.1 million items valued at $12 billion in support of 1400 weapons systems. As one of the four Inventory Control Points (ICPs) within DLA, DSCR is the lead center for air, aviation, and space support assets. DSCR manages an open purchase requisition (PR) workload valued at approximately $800 million and procures approximately $1.6 billion annually. A data comparison between DSCR s purchase requisitions and a commercial database maintained by Inventory Locator Service, Inc. (ILS), that lists available surplus assets disclosed that 28,601 of DSCR s 47,160 purchase requisitions (60.6%) were either fully or partially supportable by quantities from one or more surplus suppliers. Based on this key result of the DSCR and ILS data comparison and other data analysis, five recommendations are offered to DOD for consideration: (1) All DOD ICPs should perform research to identify potential surplus suppliers and surplus inventory databases. (2) Push and/or pull distribution methods should be established to distribute surplus information to inventory managers and buyers. This report emphasizes that a centralized batch data retrieval and push distribution system are needed to replace the current manual system that takes an estimated 1572 hours to research surplus data for DSCR s 47,160 purchase requisitions. (3) Methods to maximize the solicitation of all potential surplus sources should be implemented.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA394940

Entities

People

  • Stephen C. Smith

Organizations

  • Air University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Commerce
  • Data Analysis
  • Databases
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Governments
  • Inventory
  • Inventory Control
  • Logistics
  • Materials
  • Procurement
  • Standards
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Defense Financial Management and Audit.
  • Public Financial Management and Budgeting

Technology Areas

  • Space