ANNISTON ARMY DEPOT, Ala. - Depot leaders met July 9 with hundreds of people here who are scheduled to change jobs in a massive reorganization prompted by deployment of the Department of the Army's Logistics Modernization Program.
Billy Bickerstaff, director of mission, plans and operations, said more than 500 depot employees will be impacted by the establishment of new organizations scheduled to stand up provisionally on Aug. 29.
These DA civilians have been handed role-based job titles such as MRP planner, another inclusion to the new lingo here as ANAD prepares to shut down the Standard Depot System and start up LMP. MRP stands for material requirements planning and describes a type of business system used to efficiently manage manufacturing processes.
The depot is scheduled to go live with LMP on Oct. 14. The reorganization and realignments become official on Oct. 10.
"We're restructuring to maximize the new tool we'll be using. We want to make the best of LMP because we want to survive in the future," said Bickerstaff.
ANAD is the first installation within Army Materiel Command to have its organization fully restructured before its LMP go-live event, said Gilda Knighton, LMP business transformation manager. AMC depots and arsenals that implemented LMP during either of the first two deployment phases continue to assess their workforce alignments and organizational needs.
"We're already going to have people in place, so instead of trying to take on reorganization at go-live, we'll be working to make LMP work. The LMP Train is approaching the station.
"The time has arrived to grab your boarding pass," said Knighton.
At the July 9 meeting, Bickerstaff and representatives from the LMP Office handed out letters of reassignment-and an "LMP Boarding Pass"-to General Schedule employees working in production operations who, in addition to receiving a new job title and responsibilities, may have to change locations, depending on whether or not their new job is aligned under a new or different division or directorate.
Bickerstaff said an LMP role-mapping plan-developed by depot managers and approved by the command group-led to the establishment of a review panel used in the reassignment process. The panel included members from the areas of production management, human resources, resource management, LMP and ANAD-based American Federation of Government Employees Local 1945.
"The team worked weeks to put the puzzle together," said Bickerstaff.
Factors considered in the reassignments included work experience, organizational requirements and LMP experience. Employee preference was also a part of the decision-making process, and the panel used service compensation dates to break ties.
The changes coming with LMP are affecting people in different ways.
Roderick Trammel worked as a maintenance parts specialist here the last three years and was notified July 9 that his new job title is maintenance management specialist. His new responsibilities are comprised of creating, changing and maintaining bills of material-or BOMs-and routes for manufacturing and remanufacturing programs and their work centers.
Trammel said he believes the effects of the reorganization will be beneficial but that the announcement to those changing jobs should have taken place sooner. "The effects of the reorganization have created more opportunities for me to advance because I have 20-plus years before retirement. I'm excited about change, but the information was distributed too slowly due to the fact this was a major transition that was taking place," he said.
The reorganization is only occurring inside the three (soon to be four) directorates located in the Nichols Industrial Complex. General Manager of Production Operations Mike Burke said reassigning 500 of GMPO's nearly 3,000 people hasn't been the simplest of tasks, due to the challenges of meeting current workload requirements in SDS and planning for new work under a different business system.
"LMP changes everything. We're on track to have our folks trained and where they need to be when we go live, but it's going to take full cooperation from everyone to complete their end-user training then apply it," said Burke.
Burke said the Directorate of Production and Directorate of Engineering and Quality will remain DP and DEQ but will have changes at the division and branch levels. Directorate of Mission, Plans and Operations will be replaced by two new directorates-Production Management and Material Management.
Reassigned employees were given a week to present their case to management if they felt that the panel made a mistake with their job assignment. July 16 was the deadline, and Bickerstaff said about a dozen people approached GMPO leaders proposing alternative assignments.
Burke has the final decision on reassignments. Already, the realignment has led to the permanent promotion of more than 80 people who were in a temporary status. Employees in term positions remain on term appointments even if their jobs were realigned.
"No one was downgraded or lost a job," said Bickerstaff. "Though these 500 jobs are being abolished, we have a job for everybody because LMP will require more indirect support even though we expect our overall workload to go down in the future."
"The most important thing we can do is communicate," said Bickerstaff.
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