Eliminating the iron mountain: just-in-time supply distribution has only reduced, and not eliminated, the hoarding of excess repair parts and supplies. The author believes that the Army must overhaul its entire supply system if efficiency in obtaining parts and supplies is to be achieved and hoarding is to stop

Army Logistician, July-August, 2004 by Laurel K. Myers

General Pagonis reported that, during the reception phase of Desert Shield, the traffic flowing through the ports of Saudi Arabia totaled 12,400 tracked vehicles, 114,000 wheeled vehicles, 1,800 Army aircraft, 33,000 containers, 1,800,000 tons of cargo, 273,000 tons of ammunition, and more than 350,000 personnel.

Losses of container documentation multiplied the number of transportation personnel needed to channel containers to the correct deploying units. Such delays lengthened the waits by units to receive their supplies. Many containers languished in the staging area while awaiting identification to determine the appropriate receiving unit.

Nonstandard Solutions

A number of nonstandard methods have been used by Army personnel to obtain supplies during military operations, including padding supply orders, stockpiling extra items, and procuring supplies from black markets. General Pagonis noted that, during Desert Shield, multiple requisitions were sometimes placed for an item already in the theater, while other supply items were procured locally when possible. Army personnel often resorted to alternative measures to obtain supplies because they had lost faith in the Army supply system.

Downsizing the Army's equipment inventories during the 1990s challenged the Army to use fewer transportation assets to provide supplies to forces deployed overseas. When transporters delivered equipment to seaports for shipment to the theater of operations, they often found that the accompanying iron mountains of supplies took up more space on the ships than planned. In such cases, units had to move their equipment to the theater on two different ships, which caused confusion and congestion for the deployed units awaiting the arrival of their equipment. Under these circumstances, host nation support was used to move supplies and provide lodging for incoming forces while they waited for all of their equipment to arrive.

Deployment Problems

Just-in-time distribution, used more often, but not exclusively, during recent operations, has resulted in the deployment of smaller basic loads that require fewer containers and thus facilitates more rapid deployment. This equates to reduced space requirements on strategic lift assets and less manpower to move supplies. At the same time, it creates the resulting opportunity to deploy more units on fewer strategic lift assets. Deployments conducted using just-in-time distribution have made more efficient use of strategic lift to move units into the theaters of operations. However. some just-in-case deployments of iron mountains of "extra" supplies continue.

Customer Satisfaction

Whether an organization chooses just-in-case stockage or just-in-time distribution is influenced by customer satisfaction. For example, in an overseas theater of operations, the level of customer satisfaction with delivery of vehicle repair parts reflects, to some degree, the level of operational readiness of vehicles. That is because operational readiness relies largely on the timely delivery of repair parts to complete required maintenance. Long wait times for ordered repair parts are likely to be viewed as far more detrimental by customers anxious to improve their operational readiness than by logisticians, who might accept a delivery speed slower than that of civilian shippers if it represented an improvement over past delivery speeds.