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DLA-led team to eliminate frustrated cargo for troops

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FORT BELVOIR, Va., (USTCNS) --- Including the wrong address on a package can cause aggravating delays for civilians who are waiting to receive a birthday present or a product ordered online.

Nevertheless, when these errors go unchecked on cargo destined for Southwest Asia, it could mean a critical loss for a platoon of soldiers awaiting construction materials for a bunker or repair parts for armored vehicles.

Problems ranging from illegible, incomplete, or missing military shipping labels to poor coordination between contractors, government purchase card (GPC) holders and their transportation support offices can cause delays or 'frustrations' along the transportation supply chain, and sometimes result in shipments that never reach the intended recipient.

The Defense Logistics Agency, provider of supply support, and technical and logistics services to the U.S. military services agreed to take on the task of eliminating frustrated freight resulting from vendor shipments shipped outside of the continental United States under a partnership with the United States Transportation Command, the Department of Defense distribution process owner. This task, the Direct Vendor Delivery (DVD) Processes Initiative is one of several initiatives designed to improve end-to-end distribution within DOD.

Analysis that began in April shows that the reason for frustrations for 98.8 percent of frustrated cargo to be shipped outside the United States was due to problems with military shipping labels or MSLs.

Ironically, policies and procedures already exist that provide guidance on shipping information requirements to provide a smooth flow of vendor shipments in the DOD Transportation System; however, the heart of the problem lies in a lack of knowledge, misuse, or avoidance of these procedures.

A seemingly never-ending task, DLA is supporting a vigorous campaign to train, emphasize, and re-enforce procedures for government purchase cardholders, contractors, DOD employees and military personnel as the first step in eliminating these frustrations. A 120-day pilot will also be conducted this fall, with participating vendors, to test the capability of specific automated systems to manage and reduce frustrations of GPC shipments and provide in-transit visibility.

The DVD initiative has produced a first-time collaboration that includes the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Joint Forces Command, U.S. TRANSCOM, the DOD Government Purchase Card Project Management Office, the military services and the General Services Administration to pursue the elimination of frustrated shipments. This initiative is part of the Integrated Distribution pillar under the DPO structure, led by DLA's Logistics Operations Directorate (J-3) under Maj. Gen. Daniel Mongeon.

"In the past, GPC training has focused on financial and procurement matters overlooking the fact that users are not familiar with transportation and movement requirements," said Stephanie Pennello, DLA coordinator for DPO initiatives. "As a result, there has been much frustration associated with GPC shipments within the continental United States and abroad."

To solve the problem of neglected transportation requirements, the lead for the DVD initiative Kevin Conneen, along with his team, have created updated documentation and training for GPC users about these requirements to provide in-transit visibility of GPC shipments.

The team collaborated to draft "The GPC Guide to Overseas Shipments," that was issued July 1 by the Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy Office to holders of the purchase card.

When using the GPC to purchase items with delivery outside of the continental United States, the guidance offers descriptions for two methods of transportation: commercial door-to-door and government arranged transportation.

According to the guidance, cardholders are informed that an increasing number of overseas GPC shipments, particularly those going into contingency areas, must move through military aerial ports, ocean terminals, or container consolidation points for onward movements.

The goal of the document is to ensure that all the proper shipping information is included on military orders and are available for the preparation of complete and accurate MSLs. Before an item is ordered from a vendor, cardholders are informed that if commercial shipping is not used, they must coordinate with the individual transportation-service support office like the Installation Transportation Office, Transportation Management Office or Supply Support Activity to receive information for these labels.

According to Conneen, when a package is shipped to a consolidated control point, like Defense Distribution Depot San Joaquin, Calif., without a complete shipping label, these shipments must be taken "off line" for research and manual processing which slows down the consolidation and shipping processes and detracts from support provided to the war fighter.

To ensure that shipping labels are completed correctly, the GPC guide details procedures on how to include Mil Standard 129 and Defense Transportation Regulation requirements for all shipments This includes the ultimate consignee address along with the DOD activity code for the organization that will receive the shipment. These packages must also contain the correct transportation control number and the transportation accounting code.

"Military shipping guidance was presented at the GSA SmartPay conference in August for many DOD representatives and agency organizational coordinators with the purchase card," said Conneen. "These are the people that are responsible for going back to train their own organizational users."

The Defense Acquisition University also developed a refresher-training course made available during the second week in August that included, for the first time, specific training in transportation requirements for the purchase cardholders. This training will also be included in the basic online course, when it is restructured, in January 2005.

Even with the GPC training, the DVD team is using the pilot to find other ways to provide tools for cardholders that will allow them to incorporate and follow the GPC training in their business practices.

Currently, specific government-off-the-shelf systems have been identified to integrate with DOD E-Mall and GSA for the pilot. The Navy Smart Transportation Solution and a new Virtual Vendor Help Desk developed by the U.S. Air Force will also be tested. Several vendors have been identified to participate in the pilot, scheduled to begin in early September.

The re-enforcement of purchase cardholder policies and the Government Purchase Card DVD pilot are only the first steps in managing GPC and other "unmanaged" DVD transactions. Lessons learned from the pilot will be used to test other automated capabilities to manage GPC transactions from vendors who do not participate on GSA and E-mall order management systems. This data will help the DVD team reduce frustrated shipments to improve support to military customers.

DLA provides supply support, and technical and logistics services to the U.S. military services and several federal civilian agencies. The agency is the one source for nearly every consumable item, whether for combat readiness, emergency preparedness or day-to-day operations.

Commander, US Transportation Command was designated the Distribution Process Owner (DPO) by the Secretary of Defense in September 2003. TRANSCOM has assigned a series of "pillars", headed by a senior level logistician or transporter, to improve major areas of DoD Distribution such as Distribution Execution, Human Resources and Integrated Distribution. DLA is one of the national partners with TRANSCOM in the DPO effort.

Office of Public Affairs - transcom-pa@mail.mil
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