JMC earns Army Superior Unit Award

By Darryl Howlett, Joint Munitions Command Public AffairsJuly 31, 2007

ROCK ISLAND, Ill. - As the streamer was attached to the Joint Munitions Command flag, it was a proud moment for all. Gen. Benjamin S. Griffin, Army Materiel Command commanding general, presented the Army Superior Unit Award streamer to JMC during a ceremony July 25.

JMC is headquartered on Rock Island Arsenal. JMC earned the award for its support to warfighters around the globe. The Army Superior Unit Award is one of the Army's highest unit-level honors.

"This award speaks to what you do for services around the world, all services - Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Special (Operations)," Griffin said. "This award represents the history of the Joint Munitions Command and the whole JMC team should be proud of this. "A hundred years from now, this streamer will still fly on this flag - and I do believe JMC will still be here a hundred years from now."

According to Army documents, the basis of the award is JMC's "ongoing efforts to support warfighters at a moment's notice through increased readiness, information dominance, and horizontal integration."

Brig. Gen. James E. Rogers, JMC commanding general, thanked all JMC employees for their efforts.

"This is due to all your hard work that you provide to our warfighters," he said. "Munitions are our number one priority and we are green across the board."

The award citation highlighted the command's excellence in the following areas from December 2004 through December 2006:

Aca,!Ac Materiel Readiness Report - JMC measures and reports ammunition readiness based upon production, quality, and serviceability and further projects readiness 24 months into the future.

Aca,!Ac Centralized Ammunition Management - The development of this system allows more efficient distribution of training ammunition to deployed and mobilized units.

Aca,!Ac Continuous improvement through Value Engineering and Lean Six Sigma - Value Engineering led AMC major subordinate command's in total VE savings and percentage of savings to goal and captured both AMC's and Department of Defense's Outstanding VE Organization awards.

Aca,!Ac For Lean Six Sigma, during 2006, JMC trained 228 green belt candidates and is rapidly deploying one percent of top performers as full-time black belts. JMC is also currently implementing a rigorous process for measuring and tracking project financial results of more than 160 projects.

Aca,!Ac Quality Assurance Specialist Ammunition Surveillance support - JMC provides QASAS to ensure explosives safety, technical, logistic, and management assistance to the theater commander. They serve as ammunition surveillance representatives at the major munitions sites throughout Southwest Asia. They are instrumental in assuring safe operations for routine theater coalition ammunition as well as the collection and destruction of unserviceable, unexploded, and captured enemy ammunition.

Other areas that were highlighted included the ammunition desk work on developing and performing extensive analysis of ammunition stocks in SWA, the Logistics Industrial Base, RESET/Retrograde-Kuwait line, the Defense Ammunition Center, Security Assistance, foreign military sales, RAD/Waste, safety and Soldier support through deployments.

"I am absolutely proud to represent the selfless and professional support JMC has provided and executed," Griffin stated in the award's package. "The initiatives of the JMC team continue to improve ammunition support and significantly increase the ammunition readiness of our forces and have had direct impact on all successful warfighter missions of the past two years."