United States Transportation Command

FORT BELVOIR, Va., (USTCNS) --- Since 1998, Defense Logistics Agency employees and our partners and customers world-wide have been hearing the message, “If we plan to stay in business…We need to change.”

On Oct. 7, Vice Adm. Keith W. Lippert, director, DLA, along with Frank Lotts, deputy director, J-3, and Al Banghart, director, Enterprise Transformation, outlined some significant changes in the way DLA does business for Gen. John W. Handy, the Air Force commander in chief of the U.S. Transportation Command.

First, Lotts briefed on the DLA Business Management Model and how metrics, properly used, can be very useful tools. Done daily, monthly and quarterly, DLA metrics allow for a substantial review of financial performance and provide an opportunity to solidify goals. Specific metrics Lippert reviewed for Handy included supply and weapons systems availability, shipment times and finances.

The metrics showed some areas that DLA will be focusing on improving, such as decreasing the dollar value of backorders and increasing DLA and customer focus on high demand items. An area that has shown dramatic improvement is the average requisition rate from/to DAAS, which was one day. Even under the legacy system the average time was 433 minutes. Under BSM, the average is 54 minutes, with the best response rate to date being eight minutes. Basically, BSM techniques are helping to get materiel moved faster, and in turn, the metrics need to provide faster measurements.

Some of the reasons the legacy environment is on its’ final breath were presented, including customer dissatisfaction, the fact that the system is reactive as opposed to proactive, and costs are not well understood. The enterprise modernization vision was presented to Handy by Banghart. It entails mission-critical legacy systems being replaced with new enterprise architecture.

Steps being taken to achieve this vision include:
1) Use of Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) software
2) Reengineering using best practices
3) Improving war fighter support through collaboration

Lippert proactively demonstrated this last point by meeting with Handy. Some tenets of the Enterprise Modernization transformation include:
1) We will change, not the COTS
2) We will operate as a single enterprise, with common processes and data
3) There will be one authoritative record for data

Projected BSM mission area savings in inventory and personnel total over one billion dollars. Specific areas in which the savings will occur were presented to include a reduction in administrative lead time and a 20 percent reduction in recommended buy manual processing time.

The process transformation of demand planning will occur by going from an item focus to a customer focus, and interactive collaboration with the customer as opposed to the limited customer input today, and having a single enterprise-wide planning system instead of the decentralized model in current use. The process transformation of order fulfillment, transformation procurement and finances were also discussed as well as the benefits of reengineering by fielding best practices.

Lippert was proud to report that for the first time in DLA history, food and spare parts are being managed in a single system. He also recalled some of the early challenges of adopting the BSM system, which included passwords and connectivity, roles and permission and data conversion. Some early benefits of BSM were highlighted, and included near real time requisition processing-status, the ‘democratization of information and the fact that DLA is now out in front of its’ customers.

Lippert summed up the benefits of BSM as being reduced inventories, better quality, lower costs, and faster, reliable service. He also emphasized that DLA is here to give the war fighter’s what they need and is turning from a manager of supplies to a manager of suppliers.

DLA and TRANSCOM leaders meet

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