Book Description

The most recent update to the plan shows that DOD has made progress developing and implementing its supply chain management improvement initiatives, but the current performance measures in the plan do not fully demonstrate results. DOD is generally staying on track for implementing its initiatives, although there have been delays in meeting certain milestones. Notwithstanding this overall progress and the commitment of DOD leadership to resolving supply chain problems, the long-term time frames for many of these initiatives present challenges to the department in sustaining progress toward substantially completing their implementation. Moreover, the plan lacks outcome-focused performance measures that could gauge the results of many of the individual improvement initiatives or demonstrate progress in the three focus areas, limiting DOD's ability to fully demonstrate the results achieved through its plan. Increasing the plan's focus on measurable outcomes will enable DOD s internal and external stakeholders, including Congress and OMB, to track the interim and long-term success of DOD s initiatives and help DOD determine if it is meeting its goals of achieving more effective and efficient supply chain management. In addition, our recent work has identified continuing problems related to the three focus areas in DOD's plan. In the area of requirements forecasting, the military services are experiencing difficulties estimating the length of time between the initiation of a procurement action and the receipt of spare parts into the supply system for equipment and weapon systems. We also found continuing problems in the Air Force s inventory management practices, hindering its ability to efficiently and effectively maintain its spare parts inventory for military equipment. Specifically, an average of 52 percent ($1.3 billion) of the Air Force s secondary on-order inventory was not needed to support on-order requirements.