In an effort to reduce the logistics excess footprint and increase customer service, Karen Whitlow, supervisory distribution facilities specialist for Pine Bluff Arsenal's Directorate of Material Management, Storage Division, met with personnel from the government liquidation area of the Defense Logistic Agency Disposition Services in Little Rock last September, and came up with a plan forward.
That plan turned into a Lean Six Sigma project for the Hazardous Material Storage Division Excess Team, and resulted in a cost savings for PBA of approximately $632,807 over a three-year period.
"One and a half persons are assigned to work excess. When excess is turned in at Building 50-320, and the hard card is signed, the card is then sent to inventory," she said. "In order to move excess property off the Arsenal, information has to be put into a Electronic Turn In Document (ETID) system that belongs to DLA. Then that system either accepts it or rejects it."
Whitlow said that the process of moving excess property off the installation has backed up over the years. "It was taking approximately three man years of labor to process excess and surplus property for reutilization annually," she said. "The entire process was very time consuming, labor intensive and had unnecessary steps that resulted in a shortage of labor resources."
As a result of the meeting, she said that a process to identify only necessary disposal items for shipment to DLA in Texarkana was created.
"For example, of a potential 4000 items located in excess at Building 50-320, approximately 400 would require shipment to DLA," said Whitlow. "The remaining 70 percent could be scrapped locally either as wood product or under the Arsenal's scrap metal contract. About 60 percent would come back to the Department of Defense as reimbursable cost."
"Material Management continues to look for ways to improve our business processes while saving tax payers dollars. This project is one of many that have been in the development stage," said Lavara Henry, Storage Division chief. "When Karen Whitlow took the helm as Distribution Supervisor South storage, she took the initiative to work with the Excess team-Gertie Scott and Edmond Cunningham -and the Defense Logistic Agency to make this LSS project a reality."
Transportation costs alone have been reduced greatly, said Whitlow. According to information for this project, approximately 17 trips annually were made to DLA in Texarkana costing approximately $10,438. Trips have been reduced to six shipments per year.
"Another improvement made was to the packing and palletizing of items for transportation," said Whitlow. "For example, by using tri-wall boxes for required items, the items could be double stacked, increasing the loads to DLA from 28 pallets to 56 or greater. This reduced the number of shipments needed which in turn reduced costs."
Whitlow said one of the most helpful parts of the process was getting to know the people with DLA, and coming up with a more efficient way of dealing with excess property.
"It didn't take long to get the process going. The hardest part was coming up with the logistics of it all, and figuring out if it would work for us," she said. "The relationship with DLA helped us sort out the pieces of the puzzle."
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