DETROIT ARSENAL, Mich. -- Leadership from Tank-automotive and Armaments Command's headquarters, manufacturing arsenals and maintenance depots gathered Aug. 14-15 to synchronize readiness efforts and present a quarterly update to the Army Materiel Command's commanding general.
"We're making really great progress on all that we're doing," said Maj. Gen. Daniel Mitchell, TACOM commanding general, in his opening remarks to the AMC commanding general, Gen. Gustave Perna.
"The depots and arsenals are supporting both readiness and modernization," Mitchell said. "They are supporting readiness through their component repair and ninety-nine percent of those repair programs are on or ahead of schedule."
"We are finally seeing the benefits of investments in the supply chain over the past four years. Backorders have been reduced for three months in a row and supply availability is rising. This is resulting in improved readiness across the Army," Mitchell said.
Commanders from Red River Army Depot, Sierra Army Depot, Anniston Army Depot, Rock Island Arsenal Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center, Watervliet Arsenal, and Joint Systems Manufacturing Center-Lima then presented Industrial Base readiness initiatives.
"I'm happy with the progress," Perna said during the briefings. "It's clear to me that everybody's head is in the game."
Perna further noted the need to continue to address unplanned workload to ensure planning, funding and resource alignment. Timing of customer workload reviews, he said, was critical.
He also addressed the need to increase repair cycle float numbers in order to maintain performance to promise commitments to customers.
Repair cycle float refers to the overall process of identifying unserviceable major end item equipment for turn-in to a depot to be remanufactured and returned to a field unit.
"Repair cycle floats," Perna stated, "are the future of depot support to Army readiness."
Gen. Perna is always pushing to make things better," said Col. Jimi Hendrix, RIA-JMTC commander. "He continues to push on the things we need to push on, but he's also encouraging us to move forward on things like additive manufacturing that the Rock Island Center of Excellence is known for."
Pat Tidwell, deputy commander for RRAD, noted that "we're at ninety-eight percent on our performance-to-promise which is important to us to serve our customers and get the quantity back to them in a timely manner."
"We were at 102-percent on our revenue for the month of July, so we're in great shape there meeting the revenue goals we had in place. We had numerous backorders in place and we have satisfied those backorders."
Tidwell also noted that the RRAD team had significant gains in fulfilling secondary-items orders, saying that "we have 55 programs that we've moved to the left or (are) on schedule."
He further noted that Army Sustainment Command leaders praised the Red River Army Depot team.
"We're working ten programs for them, the primary one being the heavy equipment transport vehicle. We shipped those to them and we had mechanics available for the handoff of those vehicles," Tidwell said.
"It's always great when the customer is singing our praises and they really appreciate the equipment you're giving back to them," Perna said during the AMC update.
The general added, "Our Army readiness has improved exponentially. We have more work to do, but we're gaining ground."
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