PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - An Army wounded warrior is helping clean out a collection of unusable and excess information technology equipment that had accrued over several years at a Defense Logistics Agency Distribution warehouse in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The equipment belonged to the DLA Customer Support and Readiness Pacific office, and the organization lacked resources to keep up with current missions and also clean out the old equipment.
“The current inventory of usable equipment continued to increase, and we were quickly running out of storage place for new equipment to arrive,” IT specialist Chris Russell, who has been with DLA since 2011, said.
About 40 pallets of computers, printers and other IT equipment were removed in 2012. This was a large improvement, but still not enough, Russell said.
Help was needed to improve and expedite the cleanup process. DLA Information Operations Pacific requested assistance from the Wounded Warrior Program, and Army Capt. Eric Santiago, a wounded warrior from New York, joined the Customer Support and Readiness Pacific team through an internship program for wounded warriors.
Santiago joined Russell in late June and saw the amount of equipment he was about to tackle.
“You could barely walk through the area; it was packed with equipment,” Santiago said.
His mission was to inventory all equipment for accountability and asset management purposes.
Based on skills gained during his Army career, Santiago evaluated, sorted and organized the IT equipment storage cage, which made the area safer and more efficient for personnel entering or working there. He also consolidated and removed IT equipment packing materials, obsolete IT supplies, non-working components, and miscellaneous trash. Finally, he organized and inventoried remaining equipment.
“It has been a different experience working as a civilian versus working in the military,” Santiago said.
Santiago and Russell have made significant progress cleaning up the warehouse. They filled a 40-cubic-yard dumpster, documented equipment, and prepared 23 pallets of non-serviceable or obsolete equipment for disposition.
“Eric’s knowledge of [DLA Disposition Services] procedures and inventory management has been a great asset to our office,” Russell said. “He has allowed us to balance between customer issues, office organization, and inventory management.”