Defense Logistics Agency's Needs
The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) is the Department of Defense's largest combat support agency, providing worldwide logistics support in both peacetime and wartime to the military services as well as several civilian agencies and foreign countries. It supplies almost every consumable item America's military services need to operate.
Its latest initiatives have sought to streamline the supply depot and distribution system, focusing on moving DLA support forward to the point of military customers' demand and managing suppliers, not just supplies. It no longer has warehouses of huge inventories and has increased use of contractors, even in the battlefield. By implementing Enterprise Business Systems, DLA has updated and integrated supply chain and financial management processes and systems making DLA support to the war-fighter faster and more efficient. DLA manages 5.2 million different items, issues over 8,000 contracts per day, and had FY06 sales in excess of $35.5 billion. Procurements from small businesses exceeded $1.0 billion in FY05.
Previous analyses have indicated that although castings are present in less than 5% of DLA procured items, they show up as a disproportionate number of backorders, typically in the 10% range. When analyses of the oldest backorders were undertaken, the percentage of the oldest backorders containing castings was even higher (in the 15% range). Recently, an evaluation of high priority backorders with cast content indicated that a number of these were due to previously cancelled contracts. Thus, there is a need to enhance the procurement process for castings by Prime and Tier 2 contractors in order to improve parts availability and reduce unfilled orders.
