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USTRANSCOM, DLA Strategic Distribution Management Initiative underway
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This partnership is led by the USTRANSCOM deputy commander and the DLA director who jointly provide guidance to initiative participants.
Before the initiative "no single DOD organization undertook the task of defining, measuring, and improving the overall effectiveness and design of DOD's global distribution system," according to Army Lt. Gen. Daniel G. Brown, deputy commander in chief at USTRANSCOM.
SDMI will bring together all of the distribution components from DLA and USTRANSCOM, working with the services and CINC's to affect what at times will be sweeping changes to our current way of doing business. The SDMI Board of Directors, consisting of general officers from the Joint Staff, Office of Under Secretary of Defense, and the services, as well as from USTRANSCOM and DLA and their components, facilitate this lead in logistics revolution.
"Our goal is to break down current functional stovepipes to create a synchronized and scheduled, integrated end-to-end distribution management process," said Brown. "SDMI is an aggressive, fact-based program to provide process improvements that balance customer service, cost, readiness, and sustainability."
Patterned after the Army's highly successful Velocity Management initiative, SDMI is one of the most important joint logistics transformation efforts within DOD. What makes this exciting is the immediate improvement in both our processes and in the level of service provided to the DOD customer. The excitement grows when you realize these improvements are not the result of major systems or other investments; they are the result of focusing on and synchronizing supply and transportation processes at the strategic (wholesale) and theater (retail) levels.
The first SDMI pilot began in Europe (SDMI-E) in July 2000 targeting DOD customers in Tuzla, Bosnia and Taszar, Hungary.
Pre-SDMI Customer Wait Time (CWT) for air delivery of sustainment cargo to Bosnia averaged 15 days. However, through superb alliance with U.S. European Command over the past 9 months (JUL 00 - MAR 01) we've reduced and sustained Bosnia cargo at an average CWT OF 10.7 DAYS-an approximate 29 percent reduction!
Through further partnership with USEUCOM, we've increased use of trucks vice theater C-130 aircraft to move cargo from Ramstein Air Base, Germany to RAF Mildenhall, United Kingdom. This intermodal process reduced UK cargo port hold times at Ramstein by 12 hours, reduced costs of transport from Germany to the UK by 70 percent with little or no impact on CWT, and dramatically improved consistency of service to our customers.
We have continued to expand our successes to Aviano Air Base, Italy and Skopje, Macedonia.
Just recently, DLA and USTRANSCOM initiated two additional pilots. On 16 April 01 USTRANSCOM began a European Billing Test with goals of demonstrating commercial-like performance and billing processes.
EBT shifted approximately 17 pallets per week out of Defense Depot Susquehanna Pa. from commercial air service to military air for three locations in Germany; Baumholder, Kitzingen, and Schweinfurt.
USTRANSCOM provides a single-bill capturing all transport costs (CONUS, Strategic Lift, and Theater) to customers, and has adjusted organic rates to mirror commercial practice. Early analysis indicates CWT to the three locations is matching, and often beating commercial performance.
On 23 April, USTRANSCOM began a similar partnership with U.S. Central Command focused on improving CWT for air cargo from DDSP to units in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and surface containers from CONUS to the CENTCOM AOR. Once again, initial reports indicate CWT performance, of less than 96 hours, is closely mirroring commercial standards with no degradation of service to the customer at the end of the pipeline.
Beyond these pilots, the SDMI committees continue to work hard and are implementing innovative customer oriented changes.
For example, the Stockage Committee, under the leadership of DLA's Defense Distribution Center, established a goal to improve stockage levels at DLA's strategic distribution platforms to accelerate delivery to customers.
The Fleet Industrial Supply Center San Diego repositioned 110 NSNs to Defense Depot San Joaquin, Calif., resulting in a 8.6 day reduction of CWT. The Army is already on board and is redistributing an average 1,000 depot level repairables per week to better meet customer demands. The bottom line is proper stock positioning allows scheduling transportation, avoid use of premium service, reduce costs, increase velocity, and make better use of scarce resources.
The Surface Committee, headed by commanding general of Military Traffic Management Command, is improving container performance and reducing surface CWT by improving the synchronization between the depot, port, and ship.
Containers are being lifted on the next available vessel instead of the next scheduled lift. Containers now move up to 7 days faster than pre-SDMI efforts. Benefits are spread across DOD and industry-customers receive their property quicker, carriers get paid faster, and equipment is better utilized.
They're also improving ocean container booking processes. One-time-only shipment processing time has been reduced by 70% in 12 months; the integrated booking response to carriers was 29 hours and is now just 20 minutes.
"While we are pleased with the results so far, we also realize there is a lot more tough work ahead to expand and continue to improve our business practices. In the near future we intend to expand our SDMI initiative to USPACOM and expect to achieve similar success as those achieved in Europe," said Brown. "We look forward to publishing more success stories in the near future as these efforts expand."
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