Army logistics is essential for Army transformation

Army, Oct 2002 by Mahan, Charles S Jr

This year was a year of significant change for our country and our Army. What has not changed is our commitment to transform our forces to make them more deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable and sustainable. The Chief of Staff of the Army set three goals for combat support/combat service support (CS/CSS) Transformation---enhance strategic responsiveness; reduce the combat zone CS/CSS footprint; and reduce the cost of logistics without reducing warfighting capability or readiness. The G-4 continues to focus its energies and priorities into making these goals a reality.

The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review required Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQ-- DA) to streamline its overhead structure and flatten its organization. The goal was to make HQDA more agile, responsive and adaptive. We focused on our core competencies, ensured our staff was working efficiently and effectively, and identified and eliminated duplicative work. Through this process, we validated our roles and missions and ensured our efforts were focused on the Army's top priorities. The most significant result of the reorganization was the creation of a second, and complementary, set of roles and missions for the Army G-4. Consequently, the G-4 now also serves as the responsible official for sustainment for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (ASA ALT). The G-4 has essentially become the "L" in ALT. In this role, the G-4 ensures sustainment is adequately considered and reflected during the acquisition process. Balancing sustainability equally with cost, performance and schedule will limit trade-offs during the acquisition process, thereby resulting in the fielding of more reliable and sustainable systems. Considering operations and sustainment (O&S) costs upfront will reduce the overall lifecycle costs, increase readiness rates and allow more appropriate alignment of CSS capabilities to requirements. Major logistics Transformation will depend on our ability to design, develop and field sustainable systems.

Responsive strategic deployment is a necessity for a power projection Army and a key DoD Transformation initiative; it is an area where we have made significant progress. The keystone of this progress was the development of a comprehensive master plan for the Army power projection program (AP3). AP3 is modeled after the earlier Army strategic mobility program (ASMP), which was structured to meet the 5 1/3 divisions in 75 days mobility requirement. This new plan draws its requirements from current commander in chief operations plans, the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) and Joint Vision 2020. The Army Vision calls for closing an Objective Force task force (OFTF) in 96 hours, one division in 120 hours and five divisions in 30 days, anywhere in the world. A multibillion dollar program, AP3 will identify the lift, infrastructure and strategic mobility enabling systems needed to achieve a more rapid, robust deployment capability. AP3 addresses a wide range of power projection areas from deployment outload, to Army prepositioned sets, to deployment automation, to distribution-an essential component of power projection. In recognition of the importance of strategic deployment to the Army, the Defense Planning Guidance tasked the Army to lead the next advanced mobility concepts study, due to be completed by April 2003. AP3 is critical to realization of the Army Vision and Joint Vision 2020.

Another major component of the CS/CSS Transformation charter is the plan to reduce the cost of warfighting without reducing warfighting capability or readiness. The Army's single stock fund (SSF) initiative is an example of how we are meeting that challenge. Representing the most sweeping changes to logistics and financial business processes in the past 25 years, SSF is merging traditional wholesale and retail supply operations into an integrated, nationally managed system. The implementation of SSF eliminated multiple points of sale and credit, multiple ledgers/billing accounts, and duplicative automated systems managing the same inventory. It helped to reduce customer wait time for spare parts by enabling nationallevel redistribution of hundreds of millions of dollars of assets to meet critical readiness requirements. SSF implementation has also allowed the Army to eliminate 49 local retail stock fund ledger accounts, reducing associated personnel, processing and reporting costs with a savings of approximately $2 million annually. SSF is also exceeding our best estimates for its return on investment. While a 1999 economic analysis estimated it would take 4.5 years to achieve a return on investment, SSF is on track to do so in less than two years. Based on an assessment of the implementation benefits, metrics, and potential broad application of the business process reengineering design, the Army's SSF program was selected as the Office of Secretary of Defense winner of the Supply Chain Operational Excellence Award in April 2002. This accomplishment carries two key messages: First, the Army is transforming CSS operations and doing it smartly. Second, SSF implementation will directly and measurably improve our warfighting readiness.