Defense supply center outsources logistics support

The Defense Supply Center in Columbus, Ohio (DSCC), has outsourced logistics support for military vehicles in an effort to cut costs and speed delivery times to troops at five Army and Marine bases nationwide.

The Fleet Automotive Support Initiative (FASI) is worth at least $500 million in business to government procurement solutions provider ProcureNet Inc., of Great River, N.Y., and could soon be used to support every base in the continental United States.

"This contract has been very heavily tailored to support installations that have wheeled and tracked vehicles," said Lt. Col. Timothy Dixon, chief of the Combat Vehicles and Tailored Support Acquisition Unit. "Basically, the big thrust is for reparables and expendables, things like transmissions, alternators, generators, fan belts and tires."

DSCC's previous logistics approach was to make large buys of automotive equipment in order to get discounts. Spare parts were put in stock at warehouses managed by the Defense Depot Command (DDC). When the parts were needed, the services would requisition them from the warehouses.

But the Defense Logistics Agency has been mandated by Congress to reduce the number of items it stocks in order to reduce the need for large warehouses, Dixon said.

"We are required to leverage the best commercial practices to get parts just-in-time rather than keeping them in a warehouse and having to pay the related overhead," Dixon said. "We are getting out of the business of managing parts and into the business of managing contractors."

Dixon said outsourcing fleet logistics could displace government workers. But he notes that "across DLA we are downsizing our warehousing facilities."

"FASI affects the DDC. But then [they] knew this was coming," Dixon said.

DSCC is expanding to a total of 21,000 items in a database of items commonly requisitioned by the services. Soon, DSCC could deal solely with ProcureNet, as the company brokers and delivers every order within a 2 to 10 day window as required by the contract.

This means that whenever DSCC has a problem it goes straight to ProcureNet rather than its myriad suppliers.