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FORT BELVOIR, Va. - The Defense Logistics Agency’s efforts to reduce material and operational costs over six years will help the agency become more efficient and agile without sacrificing quality of service to military customers, DLA Director Navy Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek told a group of defense reporters June 12.
Harnitchek outlined the agency’s efforts to cut $13 billion in material and operational costs by fiscal year 2019, noting that the savings are coming as DLA streamlines its operations and improves support to war fighters.
“As we look at this from a DLA perspective, we have to be ready to significantly improve support at a whole lot less cost,” Harnitchek told the Defense Writers Group. “We make lead time investments in things to have the right stuff at the right place when people need it. What I’ve told my folks is our theme is to significantly improve performance, and we’re going to do that at dramatically reduced costs.”
Reducing excess inventory and infrastructure and improving operations through several different initiatives are helping DLA achieve this balance of reduced costs and improved service, Harnitchek said. DLA has already reduced its inventory by about $5 billion, he noted, and has shrunk supporting infrastructure accordingly.
Reducing inventory does not equate to reducing readiness, Harnitchek stressed, because DLA works closely with each military service to determine appropriate levels of equipment and supplies and calculates risk factors like geography, mission pace and transportation challenges when deciding on levels for specific areas. These considerations come into play as the agency, along with the rest of the Defense Department, shifts focus to the Pacific and areas of Europe and Africa as operational hubs.
“The key is as we look ahead to the Pacific, as we look at emerging requirements in Africa, as we look at the traditional places we’re involved in [the U.S. Central Command area of operations], it’s all about where it is you need to go, what’s the level of force structure you’re going to need to involve there, what’s the level of support that they need, do I have the access to get there and the infrastructure to support once they get there,” Harnitchek said.
This idea of “infrastructure and access” has been a central lesson learned from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where geography and political tensions often created logistics challenges, he said. In those operations, leveraging partnerships with commercial suppliers was crucial to success, as it will be in the future, he said.
“We and all of our partners in private industry and the services and combatant commanders – this big logistics nation and transportation nation – pulled off some miraculous feats of military logistics, while helping out the people in Haiti, while pivoting to Japan after the tsunami and earthquake, countless surges in and out of Iraq, similar issues in Afghanistan, the loss of [ground transportation routes through] Pakistan,” he said. “We have a battle-tested, combat-hardened group of logisticians in all the services.”
At the same time DLA is reducing inventory and improving efficiency, it is also working to reduce contract processing time, ensuring military customers’ needs are met at the right time and money is not lost on unnecessary administrative time, Harnitchek said.
The agency is also increasing efforts to prevent overcharging incidents and is continuing its work toward audit readiness to ensure financial transparency. All these efforts, the admiral said, are helping to improve the agency and keep it viable for the long term.
“I have tremendous confidence in our ability, not just the DoD, but all our commercial partners here, to meet any requirement that comes our way,” he said.
| Date Taken: | 06.12.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 06.18.2014 14:12 |
| Story ID: | 133513 |
| Location: | FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 23 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, DLA director: Cost, inventory reductions make agency more agile, by Sara Moore, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
