全球智库信息集成服务系统

• To fulfill its mission, DLA must maintain inventories of items for which demand can increase or decrease dramatically on short notice.
• DLA has maintained sufficient inventory to generally meet aggregate-level customer service goals.
• Meeting these goals has come in tandem with about $1 billion per year (2005–2013) in disposals — reflecting obsolescence, which is the biggest component of DLA's inventory holding costs — and extended stockouts for items with sudden demand increases.
• The buildup of excess inventory stems from inherent large errors when forecasting over long lead-time horizons and is exacerbated by sometimes suboptimal, large order quantities and delayed notification from customers of planned changes that will affect demand.
• Given its environment, the best remaining path to improved supply chain efficiency and effectiveness is for DLA to improve supply chain agility, which is the ability to effectively respond to changes in demand and supply.
• The initial emphasis should be on being alert to and improving response to changes in demand by reducing lead-times, right-sizing order quantities, and improving customer information flow and utilization of the information by DLA.

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) supplies common military items to the armed services and other organizations while seeking to achieve customer service goals and minimize cost. When demand for an item rises unexpectedly, providing effective customer service is challenging, and when demand for an item falls unexpectedly, DLA can be left with the sunk cost of excess inventory that it then disposes. The more quickly and efficiently DLA can respond to changes in demand — that is, the more agile the DLA supply chain — the more it can minimize such impacts. This report examines DLA supply chain agility and ways to improve it. Specifically, it focuses on the value of and the approaches DLA could take for reducing lead times, optimizing order quantities, and improving information flow from customers. The overarching recommendation is to increase enterprisewide emphasis on supply chain agility, with involvement from the most-senior management levels across the DoD supply chain management enterprise and flowing downward to all levels. Continuous attention to supply chain agility should become part of the supply chain DNA. More-specific business practice recommendations are also provided in the report.

• Chapter One

  The Need for Increased Supply Chain Agility

• Chapter Two

  Increased Enterprisewide Emphasis on Supply Chain Agility

• Chapter Three

  Customer Processes

• Chapter Four

  Order Quantities and Agility

• Chapter Five

  Acquisition Processes

• Chapter Six

  Supplier Perspectives

• Chapter Seven

  Conclusions and Recommendations

• Appendix A

  Interview Methods

• Appendix B

  Estimating DLA Holding Costs

• Appendix C

  Economic Order Quantity Formulation

• Appendix D

  Order Quantity and Safety Stock

• Appendix E

  Private-Sector Practices to Reduce Lead Time

• Appendix F

  Department of Defense and Defense Logistics Agency Policy

• Appendix G

  Lead-Time Analysis

• Appendix H

  Selecting NIIN Candidates for Long-Term Contracts