Commentary:

I'm Not Lost, But I Don't Know Where We Are

by Jeffrey Holmes

In the May-June 1997 issue of Army Logistician, I encountered several articles that made me wonder where I am in the world of logistics. I think I am on the fringe of something, but I am not sure what it is.

The first article I read was "In Search of Focused Logistics," by Lieutenant General John J. Cusick and Lieutenant Colonel Donald C. Pipp. The article was very well written and easy to read and, better still, it was wholly logical-until I came to the statement "GCSS [Global Combat Support System]is designed to do for the logistician what the Global Command and Control System (GCCS) does for the operator." Since I work with those "operators" and have tried numerous times (unsuccessfully) to get information from GCCS to use for exercises and operations, the thrill of having a similar logistics system did not carry me very far. "Well," I thought, "I'm sure they will work out the problems before they field it."

Then I read "A Velocity Management Update," by Major General Robert K. Guest, Thomas J. Edwards, and Chief Warrant Officer Ramon Navarro. Again, a good article with a lot of good ideas for improving our overall logistics system in the Army. Here, a warning signal sounded in my mind. When I read the clarification that "Our sister services call the idea by other names (Precision Logistics in the Marine Corps, Lean Logistics in the Air Force)," I had to ask myself why we have different names (and probably different approaches) for one concept.

"Velocity Management Workshop: A Reality Check," by Janice W. Heretick, showed that velocity management can and does work for the active Army. Now all of the Army needs to believe in it and give it a chance to work, regardless of what it is called.

Despite the warning signs from the first few articles I had read, I remained hopeful and read on. The next article, "QWG LOG: Allied for Logistics," by Bernard P. LeVan, sent shivers down my spine. But not for the right reasons. The clarification that "QWG LOG" stands for "Quadripartite Working Group for Logistics" immediately warned me that this article was not designed for a logistician on the ground. Actually I was sort of intrigued with the premise of developing standardized logistics procedures with our British, Canadian, and Australian allies. "After all," I reasoned, "we had been flexible enough to change from 45-caliber to 9-millimeter ammunition so we and our North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies could all shoot the same bullets. Why couldn't we perform an action as simple as standardizing procedures?" As I read on, I focused on task 6 in the QWG LOG's top 10 tasks: "Supply, demand, issue, and control." Being a 30-year logistician who has worked for 2 services, 5 major commands, and 10 installations in and out of uniform, I realized that here was an issue that could really make a logistics specialist proud: to standardize procedures for supply, demand, issue, and control. Despite the name of the group, I wished them success and hoped for future articles on just how this ideal was to be accomplished.

Then the reasons for my general concern became crystal clear as I read Colonel Mitchell Stevenson's "Twelve Dirty Questions." Although his article dealt with the unit level logistics system (ULLS), the article becomes symptomatic of the logistics problems that unit, garrison, and tenant personnel are currently experiencing at my installation-the same problems the Army has struggled with throughout my career. Here at this installation we have only a few units, and they do use ULLS. Unfortunately for them, the supply support activity (SSA) does not have the Standard Army Retail Supply System (SARSS) for their interface; units still have to convert their data to a floppy disk and carry it to the SSA for reconciliation. At one time the SSA was in the queue for conversion from our current Standard Army Installation Level Supply (SAILS) system to SARSS, and we still may be. In the meantime, we have been traded from the Army Forces Command to the Army Medical Command (MEDCOM). The MEDCOM does not like SAILS because it does not provide the type of medical interface they were used to having, so they want us to convert to the Theater Army Medical Management Information System (TAMMIS). Of course, this system does not interface with ULLS either, so the units and the soldiers still will be required to provide floppy disk input. On the bright side, this situation will be temporary until we do convert to SARSS, but it will not happen in this decade.

ULLS also has a maintenance module. Unfortunately, it cannot interface with the 20-year-old installation maintenance system known as SMMS. In fact, the current system is so old that no one is really sure what the SMMS stands for today-probably Standard Maintenance Management System. We were looking forward to receiving the new automated system known as the Standard Army Maintenance System (SAMS), but the Army recently quit fielding it because of funding problems. That is a pity since it was such a giant step forward in the world of standardization and would have helped Army maintenance become much more paperless from the unit all the way up to the Department of the Army.

On a related vein of logistics, we also have property accountability. At this installation, we were under the Army Medical Department Property and Accounting System (AMEDDPAS) for years before we quietly converted over to the Standard Property Book System-Redesign (SPBS-R). SPBS-R has its good and bad points like all logistics systems. One of the worst points is trying to convert hand receipts from the medical system to the "standard" system. Every hand receipt must go to the Army Information Systems Software Development Center, Fort Lee, Virginia, for conversion, and ensuing problems are almost universal with each output. We are hoping to get this completed soon because we understand our new major command wants us to convert back to AMEDDPAS, regardless of what the Army standard might be. And one day we look forward to getting into the queue for the Defense-wide system known as the Defense Property Accounting System. Of course it too will probably have the "-R" for "redesign" tacked onto its acronym by the time we finally do receive it.

My comments refer only to standardization within the active Army. The Army National Guard and Reserve each have their own systems and "standardized" procedures. And, of course, our sister services each have at least one set of "standardized" systems. The reason I keep mentioning the systems is because each automated system comes with an extremely detailed and hard-wired set of procedures for that system plus any other interfacing manual and automated systems.

All of this is to say that I am supremely disappointed with our existing logistics system interface. I did not even bother describing the financial, contracting, personnel, or other related automated systems that play a part in the success or failure of logistics. It would have depressed me further. So, please excuse me when I have trouble getting excited about the prospects of the Quadripartite Working Group for Logistics developing standardized logistics procedures for four countries. If we cannot achieve that goal for a single arm of a single service within this country, I fear that any QWG LOG achievement will be primarily in the area of meaningless rhetoric-at least to those of us on the ground.

Jeffrey Holmes is acting chief of the Logistics Management Office, Directorate of Logistics, U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He has a bachelor's degree in psychology from California State University, Long Beach, and recently attended the Army Management Staff College.