Do it, DoD: An Integrated Supply Chain
The decade-long quagmire of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns has been a learning experience in more ways than one for the U.S. Department of Defense. For supply chain managers, it's been a wake-up call.
As sophisticated and often well-managed as the military's supply chain is, there's still plenty of work to be done to make it fully integrated.
Dr. Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute, a think tank specializing in national defense issues, argues that an integrated supply chain should be aggressively pursued in the wake of our increasingly complex, decade-long wars.
"One of the most important lessons to emerge from a decade of conflict is the value of integrating supply chains," he writes. "This requires visibility across the entire supply chain from the parts makers to the shippers and the organizations that maintain inventories of parts all the way into the facilities where repairs, overhauls and maintenance are performed."
Dr. Goure gives the example of Customer Pay, a Humvee support program that ended up saving the government almost $40 million within a year.
"It illustrates the value of using an experienced private sector supply chain manager to integrate all the moving parts in the complex system that supports repair and maintenance of modern weapons platforms," Dr. Goure concludes.
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