Army leaders face constant pressure to keep a wide variety of readiness metrics at the highest possible levels, including several sustainment-specific metrics. Given the need to be ready for war, taking action to keep readiness high makes complete sense. With that said, some of the metrics take an inordinate amount of time to maintain and add unneeded stress on Soldiers and junior leaders, while arguably adding nothing to actual readiness. I am recommending senior sustainment leaders take a comprehensive look at our metrics and adjust those that simply do not make sense. I will provide two examples of goalposts that could be moved as a starting point.
Customer Wait Time
The first example has to do with customer wait time (CWT), which is how long it takes a unit or activity to receive an item from the time of order to the time of receipt. Army sustainers will recognize this metric from our supply warehouses, or supply support activities (SSAs). There are multiple elements of CWT, and almost all must be done in one day or less. The central question is a simple one: where did the one-day standard come from?
The staff action to clear certain elements of CWT and release strategy (RS) typically happens every day, but at the end of the fiscal year, there are usually delays due to overall funds availability. Those CWT elements are referred to as ZPARK, based on the transaction code associated with the action. RS essentially involves releasing funds to match the orders that have been approved in the ZPARK step.
Since holding orders at either stage, ZPARK or RS, negatively impacts CWT, staff personnel typically cancel all open orders that do not get passed through the ZPARK and RS gates. This keeps CWT low, but it also means supply or maintenance clerks will need to re-order all the canceled parts the next duty day, instead of completing other tasks.
Moving to the SSA itself, the same one-day standard exists for post goods issue actions (issuing a part to the unit from an inbound shipment) and post goods receipt (PGR) actions (the unit acknowledging receipt of the item). Again, this standard does not account for the reality on the ground.
Good clerks understand the importance of high-priority parts for our most important pieces of equipment, and they will diligently head to the SSA to pick up a critical item no matter how late in the duty day it is. But that often means hours of waiting behind many other people, since every supply clerk and maintenance clerk is expected to pick up parts and supplies every single day. If their assigned bin of parts is empty, they do not need to visit the SSA, but they have no latitude beyond that. This means a clerk will spend hours away from the supply room or motor pool, time that could be spent updating hand receipts, conducting parts inventories, and conducting administrative tasks.
Clerks put in those hours at the SSA so their PGR numbers stay under one day, even if they are picking up a routine order of our ubiquitous green notebooks or other similarly low-priority items. Extending the standard timeline for these metrics to three or four days would be more realistic, and it would support other unit requirements such as weapon qualification, mandatory training, unit standdowns, and other missions.
Not Mission Capable Equipment
The second example has to do with our expectations surrounding dead-lining faults or those that make a piece of equipment not mission-capable. I do not know who writes the technical manuals (TMs) for our equipment, but anecdotally the maintenance tables sometimes seem designed to make any fault a dead-lining one. The problem with this is that in many cases the equipment itself can still be used for its primary mission. The United States often shares equipment with other countries around the world, and there are some reports on maintenance of that equipment that show high usage rates even while sustaining multiple dead-lining faults.
One example entailed those pieces of equipment as partially mission capable, meaning, hypothetically, the equipment could still move, shoot, provide power, etc., even though it had faults like a non-functioning headlight. In this example, the logisticians in the room sensed that the equipment should be pulled from usage, even though it was significantly needed on real-world missions. We would be wise to remember one of the oft-quoted Murphy’s Laws of Combat: “If it’s stupid and it works, it isn’t stupid.” Instead of being hung up on our maintenance tables in the TMs, maybe we should take a hard look at those tables. The solution could be a collective effort, using a process that already exists: the option at the back of nearly every publication to submit recommended changes. However, instead of conducting this in a piecemeal fashion, the leading entity could establish a review schedule, similar to the process that exists for reviews of updated doctrinal publications.
These are two examples, and there are likely others we could examine (frequency and depth of maintenance checks are ripe for analysis). In looking at these examples, I am not saying we should abandon readiness metrics in their entirety. I am saying we should determine if they make sense instead of berating ourselves over not measuring up. I am confident our leaders are not the type who willfully remain in a “we’ve always done it that way” mentality. With that in mind, let us collectively set some realistic goals, and then find a way forward.
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Lt. Col. Eric Shockley serves as the commander for the 4th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colorado. His previous assignments include a security force assistance brigade advisor in the U.S. European Command area of responsibility and an observer controller/trainer at the Joint Readiness Training Center, Louisiana. He is a career Army logistician who commissioned as a Quartermaster officer in 2005.
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This article was published in the Summer 2024 issue of Army Sustainment.
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