On Aug. 28, the Joint Munitions Command conducted its quarterly review with the Army Materiel Command Commander, Gen. Gustave "Gus" Perna. These quarterly reviews are a "constant effort to continue to see ourselves and hold ourselves accountable to the output we want to achieve." These meetings "help us drive behavior changes to the output that we want--your understanding of my priorities and intent," said Perna.
Col. Michelle Letcher, commander of JMC, focused on how JMC is supporting AMC's campaign plan. "The purpose of this strategic battle rhythm event is to provide you an update on the three things tied to your campaign plan. One, synchronization and integration with the enterprise. Two, seeing ourselves and holding ourselves accountable to manage and mitigate risk. Three, ensuring we are deliberate and disciplined in our execution of your priorities, objectives, and initiatives," said Letcher.
Key topics of the meeting included how JMC is talking the lines of effort associated with strategic readiness, future force, and Soldiers and people.
"The last two updates focused heavily on our reform efforts. Today, you will see how we have expanded our objectives," said Letcher.
--Strategic Readiness--
With regard to our distribution mission, "requirements are JMC's number one driver. We are focused on indicators to understand the link to readiness," said Nate Hawley, the acting deputy for the Munitions Logistics and Readiness Center. Hawley noted that MLRC is experiencing an increase in new training requirements and new production receipts. "We are balancing supply and Warfighter requirements to meet operational needs," said Dan Brown, the director of the Demand Planning Directorate.
As part of JMC's production mission, members of the MLRC are "developing a process to include a review of supply chain issues," said John Campbell, the director of the Sustainment Operations Directorate. MLRC employees are working with JMC installation commanders to assess component availability issues impacting production workload so that JMC leadership can "surface problems early to the appropriate level, attack, and resolve them more quickly," said Campbell. Perna stated that this strategy is important so that we can visualize the requirement, understand the resources, and get ahead of the requirement.
In an effort to operationalize the command, Letcher is now tracking the direct labor hours across the Organic Industrial Base. "This allows us to better vet unplanned workload, which, in turn, has led to better plans," said Hawley. "People need to be doing the right work, and we need to hold ourselves accountable," said Perna.
--Future Force--
JMC continues its reform efforts under the Enterprise-Integrated Logistics Strategy. Through these efforts, the command will become "operationalized as DoD's munitions provider from basic training to global battlefield dominance," said Hawley. "In the area of receipt and issue, we are realigning war reserves, implementing a four-region distribution network, linking to the sustainable readiness model, and refining our outload plans."
"We are implementing a storage reform plan so that stocks are stored in alignment with depot readiness storage plans," said Hawley. The new plan should be completed by the end of Fiscal Year 2022. "I'm holding commanders accountable to meet their plans," said Letcher. Through this effort, "munitions will be stored in a ready state to receipt, store, and issue," said Hawley.
With increased funding for demilitarization, JMC is projecting a 36-percent reduction of demilitarization assets and a 43-percent reduction at outload sites. These efforts will "right size the storage footprint for the joint warfighter," said Hawley.
JMC is also optimizing the depots through the OIB to Sustainable Readiness Model with the goal of "all depots using the same processes, providing 20 percent more throughput, 100 percent of the people doing 100 of the right work 100 percent of the time," said Walt Songaila, director of the OIB-SRM project. This strategy also allows us to "get after the root of problems to determine what is causing them," said Songaila. "One thing that we learned is that by changing business rules at JMC headquarters to maximize shipping full rather than partial pallets, we can save numerous man-hours and reduce requisitions," said Songaila. Other throughput improvements include increased trucks and shifts at McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, increased production at McAlester, and cycle time improvements at Crane Army Ammunition Activity.
Perna confirmed that this strategy was the appropriate path forward. "Commanders need to lead. We need centralized management and decentralized execution," said Perna.
When discussing the modernization efforts associated with JMC installations, Perna said, "We need to do the most important projects that correlate with readiness. We need to ensure readiness, greater efficiency, and that we are prepared for the future."
Perna also emphasized the importance of using Total Force Integration to meet JMC's mission requirements. "We need to identify what we need done and which units can help," said Perna. "Expansion in TFI provides a real-world training opportunity for reserve units to exercise mission command and other tasks while accomplishing AMC support missions," said Hawley.
--Soldiers and People--
Norbert Herrera, deputy chief of staff for Human Resource Management, updated Perna on JMC's human capital plan and its focus this quarter "on emphasizing meaningful supervisory functional training and leadership developmental initiatives aligned to mission needs." Herrera discussed recent supervisor training initiatives and results from the leadership assessment tool taken by more than 200 JMC employees.
Letcher ended the brief by stating that she is "proud of the hard work of this organization."
Perna said, "You are clearly executing my priorities and really starting to visualize and operationalize my intent. However, we need to institutionalize the output and purpose, because we want an organization that can move without the leaders. We should be agile and adaptive enough that emergencies become mere adjustments."
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