ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. — Col. Ronnie Anderson Jr., the commander of the Joint Munitions Command, sat down with JMC’s workforce at the end of November to inform them of his 90-day assessment.
Anderson is proud to be the 14th commander of JMC, and he knows the command can live up to its mission: JMC provides precise and predictive conventional munitions sustainment and life cycle management to an expeditionary global force from 17 arsenals, depots, and ammo plants across the spectrum of conflict in support of the joint force.
“I am 100% confident that JMC, and all of its sites, can absolutely meet any wartime requirements,” Anderson said.
Anderson's evaluation highlighted JMC's strengths in people, readiness and modernization. These aspects align seamlessly with the Army Materiel Command and the overarching priorities of the Army.
JMC is always seeking individuals to fill job openings, and the command is actively working to meet a 45-days to hire goal.
“We will intensify our endeavors to convey incentives aimed at minimizing time to hire, attracting, and retaining positions that are challenging to fill, and competing effectively in the ongoing talent acquisition competition,” Anderson said. “Based on a lot of corporate study, if we get the human capital management right, if we get onboarding right, and we get our leader development things right, then the retention part largely takes care of itself.”
Concerning readiness, JMC is advancing its automation, as well as the munitions inspection and audit process, by incorporating data and analytics tools. This is aimed at more effectively capturing the requirements of JMC’s partners.
“You all excel at the elements of our core mission,” Anderson said. “Data and applied analytics will continue to help drive decision-making and changes across JMC’s enterprise long into the future.”
Regarding its modernization efforts, JMC is exploring opportunities beyond deferred maintenance projects to introduce innovation and impact production processes in line with industry best practices. The aim is to lower costs, enhance efficiency and minimize risks to the workforce.
“We’re progressing and we’re leading the way in many of the efforts in the organic industrial dase modernization planning and execution,” Anderson said. “OIB modernization is a fast-moving train and there are a lot of unknowns.”
Anderson’s assessment also focused on processes, procedures, operations and areas of performance that require continuous improvement, innovation or applied data solutions.
JMC’s vision is to ensure excellence in munitions readiness and sustainment through continual innovation and modernization.
“The vision is where we aspire to be and what we aspire to be,” Anderson said. “It indicates what we aspire to provide to the force. There’s no timeline, and there’s no end state.
“There’s no room to stop and say this is good enough,” Anderson added. “The vision communicates an endeavor to continuously improve to provide the absolute best that we can provide at all times — anywhere, anytime, always.”
Based on his 90-day assessment, Anderson also introduced the updated JMC Campaign Plan. The lines of effort in the plan are focused on human capital development, munitions readiness, security and protection of the joint strategic support area, strategic business development and modernization.
“Within the lines of effort, we have strategic objectives that we need to accomplish, and those strategic objectives have supporting tasks that we have to chip away at,” Anderson said. “We’ve assigned champions for each of the lines of effort so that we can hold ourselves accountable. If you go back to the doctrinal definition of a line of effort, they are crosscutting efforts that span space and time.”
Any organization has room to improve, and Anderson noted there are a few procedural changes that will take place. Overall, he likes what he’s seen within JMC’s headquarters, as well as on his visits across the munitions enterprise.
“I’m very excited about where we are and where we are going,” Anderson said.
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