Current, Former Defense Logistics Agency Employees Celebrate 50 Years of Logistics Support

FORT BELVOIR, Va., Oct. 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "Around the world, around the clock" describes the Defense Logistics Agency better today than ever, said the agency's 11th director, Navy Vice Adm. Alan Thompson, on Oct. 26 during DLA's 50th anniversary celebration in the McNamara Headquarters Complex.

Retired Navy Vice Adm. Edward Straw, director of DLA from 1992 to 1996, joined Thompson, employees and former leaders to reflect on five decades of logistics support to America's military. The event was held in conjunction with the 2010 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, which was also attended by Alan Estevez, assistant secretary of defense for logistics and material readiness.

Thompson called today's DLA "a vibrant logistics enterprise around the globe."

"Each day we receive and process more than 114,000 orders and we engage in over 11,000 contracting actions," he said. "In the fiscal year that just ended three weeks ago, we had historical sales at $46.1 billion."

"We're forward with the warfighter, with over 400 DLA military and civilian members currently serving in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan," he continued. "We've significantly enhanced our statutory role as a combat support agency reporting to the chairman of the joint chiefs and were commended for significant improvement in the last biannual assessment that we received from the Joint Staff."

In introducing Straw, Thompson said his predecessor "guided DLA's journey for a number of years."

"He is a superb leader, a true visionary and one of DLA's most successful former directors," Thompson said.

Straw was known for his ability to merge best practices of the public and private sectors to enhance the agency's performance and drive savings, Thompson added.

"He restructured the agency and drove major changes that reflected an era of increased efficiency, enhanced performance and closer integration with joint forces that remain the DLA standard today," Thompson said.

Logistics and its practitioners are the most critical factors to mission success, Straw said. He described the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, when former President George H. W. Bush said the victory of Desert Storm belonged as much to logisticians as it did warfighters.

"And while we are all very proud of the {Defense Department's] logistics performance in that war, we knew that this logistics success was driven by moving mountains of inventory by thousands of support troops, because we did not have the technological nor front-line logistics organizational capabilities to do our job more efficiently," he said.

When DLA was established in 1961 as the Defense Supply Agency, its mission was to manage and store consumable items used by more than one service. The intent was to make logistics support more efficient through consolidated management and leveraged buying power, Straw said. The agency's role eventually expanded to include areas like fuel and material disposal, so DoD renamed the agency the Defense Logistics Agency in 1977.

"Radical" developments in the late '80s and early '90s put DLA in closer contact with customers, Straw said. Defense Management Review Decisions realigned the services' primary distribution services under DLA, for example, and also expanded the agency's role as an inventory manager and cataloger for service-unique consumable spare parts.

"As has been for 50 years, DLA's people did not shrink from the massive DMRD challenges. Instead, they capitalized on them as new opportunities to better serve the department and its warfighters and to save taxpayer dollars," Straw continued.

Other changes included the introduction of prime vendor contracts in medical and subsistence commodities, which Straw said helped reduce the costs of warehouse space and associated labor by more than 35 percent. DLA also expanded its focus on direct readiness issues and started deploying alongside customers to provide on-the-ground support around the world. And when Hurricane Andrew struck Miami in 1992, DLA initiated its humanitarian support role with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The agency has continued to evolve in the past decade, Straw said, citing the DLA 21 Strategic Plan as the underpinning to meet the logistics support needs of the 21st century. DLA also was the first DoD agency to successfully implement an enterprise resource planning system, called the Enterprise Business System, which integrates business functions, resources and information from shared data stores into one system.

"EBS is arguably the best ERP implementation in DoD … and is proving its value in supporting financial savings, inventory reduction and readiness improvements," Straw said.

Base Realignment and Closure 2005 decisions gave DLA the additional tasks of direct inventory management and distribution responsibility for key industrial activities like naval shipyards and air logistics centers.

"Last and most recently, the agency has been a major player in DoD's evolving efficiency efforts by improving inventory positioning around the world," Straw added.

DLA's strength is ultimately in its people, he continued.

"The civilian staff – at all levels, in both the field and headquarters – has always been superb. This experienced civilian workforce brings strong skills and deep commitment. Coupled with the talented, field-experienced military [personnel] assigned to DLA, they become a world-class team of logisticians," he said.

Refreshing the agency's aging workforce, keeping up with technology changes and preventing counterfeit parts from entering the supply chain are a few of the challenges Straw said the agency will face in the near future. Meeting heavy industrial support requirements as equipment returns from Iraq and eventually Afghanistan will be another challenge. But possibly the biggest challenge, he said, will be operating under the severe fiscal constraints that lie ahead for DoD.

"But I am confident that DLA will successfully meet its challenges," he added. "It's in your DNA to do so, and I have the greatest faith that you will continue to uphold the traditions of this outstanding organization."

Since retiring from the Navy in 1996, Straw has held senior executive positions as president of Ryder Integrated Logistics, Inc.; senior vice president of Global Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management at Compaq Computer Corporation; and as president of Global Operations for Estee Lauder.

Calling DLA a "national treasure," Straw commended all employees, past and present, for making the agency a key contributor to America's defense.

"Frankly, my 15 years of private-sector supply chain experience since 1996 have convinced me that no one does it any better than DLA," he said.

As a Department of Defense combat support agency, DLA provides the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, other federal agencies, and joint and allied forces with a variety of logistics, acquisition and technical services. The agency sources and provides nearly 100 percent of the consumable items America's military forces need to operate, from food, fuel and energy, to uniforms, medical supplies, and construction and barrier equipment. DLA also supplies more than 80 percent of the military's spare parts.

Headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., DLA has about 27,000 employees worldwide and supports about 1,900 weapon systems. For more information about DLA, go to www.dla.mil, www.facebook.com/dla.mil or http://twitter.com/dlamil.

SOURCE Defense Logistics Agency