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DLA streamlines parts flow between it, ALC

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  • By Amy T. Clement
  • DSCR Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla., --  A streamlining inventory initiative implemented recently between the aviation supply chain in Richmond, DLA Oklahoma City and Defense Distribution Center has decreased customer wait times from more than two days to less than one day on critical items at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. 

Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker transferred supply, storage and distribution functions to DLA on Feb. 8, with more than 300 employees transferring from the 776th Maintenance Support Squadron to DLA. 

"Now that these people are working for DLA and are part of DLA aviation, we wanted to start an initiative to capitalize on the knowledge and tools available to retail and to wholesale," said Cindy McGee, chief of DSCR's Business Process Support Directorate.
The purpose was to streamline inventory in order to get items to our customers in the right place at the right time, McGee said. 

"The basis of the (streamlining inventory initiative) was about getting the folks who are traditional wholesalers to sit down with our SS&D folks, who are traditional retailers, and work together to come up with more efficient and better processes to support retail," McGee said. 

McGee said the idea of streamlining inventory came about in March. McGee and Elaine Dockray, chief of supply at DLA Oklahoma City, put together a team of experts from both the wholesale and retail sides. The group began collaborations in April.
"We decided to start the program as a pilot at Tinker," McGee said. "We opened up discussions on what we could do today without having Day Two systems in place. What we could do today to work together to support the maintenance customers better. The results were a three step strategy." 

Day Two is the time between the in-place transfer to DLA and the initial operating capabilities of the enterprise resource planning solution. In Day Two, transferred employees are still operating using legacy systems, but are operating as a DLA organization. 

The first step in the streamlining inventory initiative involved stock positioning. "This meant ensuring that wholesale stock was physically located at Tinker to support the customer's retail needs," McGee said. "DLA already has systems and processes in place to put stock there, but we considered not only DLA's wholesale knowledge, but Elaine and her retail folks did analysis to determine if there were additional items that would have a significant benefit to the retail side if the stock was located there." 

Once the team identified 2,000 items that could be used at Tinker, but weren't currently located there, they worked with Defense Distribution Center to get the items moved. 

"DDC was a significant supporter of this program," McGee said. "They enacted a plan to quickly move the stock to Tinker and completed the moves by the end of May."
The second step in the SII strategy dealt with demand planning. "DLA has forward presence demand planners and the Air Force's Global Logistics Support Center also has demand planning points of contact," McGee said. "Through our collaboration with Tinker, we've found that our SS&D folks have extensive knowledge on the current use of national stock numbers and the future needs for NSNs." 

"We realized it would be beneficial for them to be able to view our demand plans for items that they are managing in retail, so we established view-only access to enterprise business systems demand plans for 23 of our new SS&D personnel at Tinker and trained them on this capability in July," McGee said. "As they utilized this new capability to see our EBS demand plans, they will work with the GLSC's (points of contact) to ensure that the demand plans properly reflect upcoming maintenance needs." 

The third approach in SII involved acquisition. "This strategy so far has involved analysis in taking what the retail folks need and comparing it to what our wholesale system has indicated needs to be prioritized," McGee said. "We're working towards ensuring that we have alignment between acquisition priorities within our wholesale system and what the retail folks deem as critical." 

SII at Tinker has resulted in a positive effect on the retail system in repositioning the stock. "Statistics show that the retail inventory levels for this particular stock were reduced by almost $1 million, and the customer wait time was reduced by approximately two days for these items," McGee said. 

"Customer wait times for the mechanics on these items is now .29 days," said Todd Tyson, senior business process analyst in DSCR's Business Process Support Directorate. 

"DLA EBS already had rules that supported our customers in properly positioning stock," McGee said. "SII considers retail information, which is now available because part of the SS&D effort. This is allowing us to be more efficient by evaluating how we update our stock positioning strategies to incorporate our retail SSD&D sites." 

A second group of approximately 2,000 items will be repositioned to Tinker in the near future. In addition, there is a team in the analysis phase for repositioning stock at DLA Warner Robins at Robins Air Force Base, Ga.