Visibility of excess components on APC just became easier with new program at Sierra Army Depot

Senior leadership at Sierra Army Depot held a ribbon cutting ceremony last month to kick-off the new Army Equipment Regeneration and Utilization Center Program.

The program will have a dedicated team of 15 personnel who will perform technical inspections on multiple variations of Armored Personnel Carriers that are currently stored at SIAD. Before this program was initiated, item managers did not have visibility of the vehicle components that could potentially be a source of supply for the reset of like-type vehicles.

Crews will be using a PDA- type handheld device with inspection criteria data loaded on to it. The PDA will be used to record whether particular parts are available or missing on these vehicles. Once the inspections are completed, the data will then be uploaded from the handheld device to a server that holds the master database located at TACOM Life Cycle Management Command, Warren, Mich.

At this point, item managers now have immediate visibility of components currently on an APC that could be pulled for current or future requirements. By completing inventories such as this, the Army could realize a substantial savings by harvesting parts from excess vehicles in lieu of buying new parts. Some of the parts on the vehicles are no longer procurable in the supply system and harvesting time is the only answer for the customer.

Sierra Army Depot is currently funded $2.5 million to perform technical inspections on 4,381 vehicles. The Depot is scheduled to complete approximately 520 vehicles per month.

By taking on this new program, Sierra is also piloting the new way of doing this type of business. The Depot is now accomplishing this in an automated fashion instead of the manual process, of which Sierra has been doing for the last two years which created several hours of data input for Sierra and TACOM LCMC.

This new system will allow Sierra to streamline their process and will tremendously reduce the man hours involved in capturing this type of information. This is a great program for Sierra as it fits into our core competencies and it is helping the Army reduce their costs in resetting and or recapping the Army Fleet.