In any theater of operations, the generation of excess materiel is inevitable. Unit drawdowns, the requirements of contingency operations around the world, adjustments in unit authorizations, and changes in the demand for supplies all cause excess. In order to address this issue in U.S. Army, Europe (USAREUR), the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics (ODCSLOG) has developed a Theater Excess Management Command Plan. Under this plan, USAREUR's major subordinate commands (MSC's) are required to identify their excess and provide status on the actions they take to dispose of that excess properly. Theater-level visibility and command emphasis on excess reduction are provided by means of monthly in-process reviews (IPR's) to the USAREUR DCSLOG and quarterly IPR's to USAREUR's Deputy Commanding General.
Tracking Excess, From the Unit to the Theater
The goal of the excess management program is to reduce excess through the focused application of Army regulations, Department of the Army guidance, and internal reviews and analyses. USAREUR defines excess as follows—
· At the property book level, for class II nonexpendable items and class VII major end items (such as trucks and tanks): Excess includes equipment not authorized by current authorization or a modification table of organization and equipment (MTOE) that will come into effect within 1 year.
· At supply support activities (SSA's), for class II expendable items (such as items one might obtain from a hardware store), class III packaged items (such as antifreeze), class IV items (such as barbed wire or wood), and class IX items (such as tank engines): Excess includes any item above the requisitioning objective (RO).
In order to reduce excess, USAREUR submitting units and agencies must understand and use the same definitions and terms as those appearing on USAREUR's excess charts. For example, submitting units need to use properly terms such as "Items To Move" and "Items To Retain." To ensure the integrity of data, all agencies use the data current at the end of each month. These data are provided by USAREUR MSC's and staff agencies and are briefed by those same agencies, which avoids the problem of the MSC's and agencies explaining other people's numbers.
USAREUR's excess management program is designed to establish a method for tracking both the dollars and the number of items tied up in excess, by class of supply, within each MSC and in the theater as a whole. USAREUR's leaders then can identify problem areas by MSC, supply class, and commodity and gain visibility of USAREUR's most costly excess items (the top excess dollar-drivers) at the MSC level. By having visibility of the top 12 excess items, USAREUR can focus its efforts on reducing those excess high-dollar items. As each unit works off its top 12 dollar-drivers, other items will migrate to the top of its list. Eventually, we hope that the majority of excess items will be contained within the top 12 charts.
The excess management program also seeks to ensure that MSC's cross-level excess items within their commands within 90 days before reporting those items as excess to the theater level. Once an excess item is reported to the theater level and a document number is obtained on the turn-in document, the unit has 60 days to turn in that item or cross-level it in accordance with disposition instructions.
In the USAREUR excess command plan, we have incorporated lessons learned about reducing excess, proven areas of excess generation, and programs and policies that permit commanders to identify the causes of excess within their units. MSC's within USAREUR have made tremendous strides, reducing their total excess value by 57 percent since the program was initiated in January 1997.
Program Benefits
The ODCSLOG staff briefs the DCSLOG each month on excess data obtained from each MSC and the 200th Theater Army Materiel Management Center (TAMMC). The charts detailing excess status are returned to each MSC so they can compare their excess reduction efforts to those of other MSC's. This action also provides MSC's with information about equipment in other USAREUR units that can fill their equipment-on-hand shortages.
The decision to place special command emphasis on the top 12 dollar-drivers is based on the assumption that high-dollar-value items retained as excess affect Army readiness in several ways: by denying needed equipment to a unit with a shortage; by draining maintenance dollars from the unit retaining the excess item; and by wasting the time of mechanics who maintain equipment that they are not authorized and possibly not trained to maintain.
Special emphasis on the top 12 dollar-drivers has resulted in significant reductions in the total dollars tied up in excess within USAREUR. For example, excess M1A1 tanks held by the Seventh Army Training Command constituted our number one dollar-driver as reported on that command's excess report. These tanks were used originally for training in Hungary (for tank crews redeploying from Operation Joint Endeavor) and were no longer needed. They since have been shipped to the Texas National Guard.
USAREUR's excess management program has produced some other benefits—
· Theater excess retention policy. Sometimes units report on their monthly excess reports that they want to retain excess items, which they intend to add to their authorization documents. This practice led the USAREUR Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (ODCSOPS) to publish a theater excess equipment retention policy. The policy addresses requests for changes to authorization documents (DA Form 4610-R and DA Form 2028) and letters of retention for units, pending release of a new authorization document. The visibility of these retained excess items is maintained through monthly excess reports, which include a chart that lists the number of 4610-R and 2028 submissions and where they are in the system. This information is passed to the ODCSOPS Force Management Division for review in conjunction with their records on unit submissions.
· USAREUR equipment classification technical inspection standard. The ODCSLOG Maintenance Division has issued a standard that calls for performing classification technical inspections within 15 work days from the date equipment is job-ordered to the supporting direct support (DS) maintenance unit.
· A review by the ODCSLOG Maintenance Division of USAREUR's policy on orphan units. Orphan units are those units without organic maintenance facilities. They are supported by the closest maintenance support activity. Long "awaiting inspection" times reported on the monthly excess charts have resulted in new policy for support to orphan units, which has reduced the amount of time a unit needs to perform required inspections on equipment.
· Materiel readiness reviews conducted by V Corps and other MSC's. These reviews now address readiness issues that affect management of excess materiel.
Using Automation to Obtain Excess Data
Reporting excess data requires coordination with several staff elements within a unit. The information required for the current excess reports is obtained from property book officers (PBO's). The PBO must coordinate with the unit's maintenance officers and force management personnel to provide these reports. Many hours are spent adding numbers, making the necessary calculations, and ensuring that all numbers on the unit's chart are accurate.
During the April 1998 quarterly IPR for the Deputy Commanding General, the ODCSLOG fielded an automated version of this process. This program was developed by a Washington State reserve component officer, Major John Knowlton, while he was serving on active duty at Headquarters USAREUR. Using Microsoft Office Excel and its Visual Basic programming language, he created a program that automatically calculates, totals, and fills in charts with information supplied by the user. Units have to put in numbers only once. If the same numbers should be used in more than one place on the excess chart, the program automatically places those numbers in the required locations. These charts then are sent electronically to the MSC's.
The MSC has an automated excess consolidation program that which combines the input from all of its subordinate units. This program also can tell the MSC the date and time that the units submitted their reports. Two added features are the Help file and the virus protection feature. The Help file allows the unit and the MSC to access a step-by-step procedure that guides them through the data input and consolidation process. The virus protection system prevents another program from opening while the user is accessing or using the excess consolidation program. When the MSC has completed its excess consolidation, it can send its automated consolidated excess reports to Headquarters USAREUR electronically.
Individual units are not required to provide numbers on excess consumable and repair parts. This information is obtained monthly from the TAMMC. The TAMMC accesses the Standard Army Retail Supply System (SARSS-2AC/B) using INFORMIX-Standard Query Language (ISQL).
The ODCSLOG is exploring the possibility of automatically accessing the Standard Property Book System-Redesign that PBO's use to obtain data required for excess reports. The goal of this initiative is to reduce significantly the amount of time units need to access data required in USAREUR's excess management charts.
When the user first accesses the excess consolidation program for the MSC, four buttons appear. The "Reports" button brings him to the individual excess reports; the "Help" button accesses a descriptive, step-by-step help program; the "Quit" button causes him to exit the program; and the "Consolidate" button accesses the consolidation screen. When the user accesses the consolidation screen, he will see on the left all the files contained in the accessed directory. On the right he will see a list of the files to be consolidated. The user can remove any file by pressing the "REMOVE" button. If his Excel program is not defaulted to the proper directory, he can change the directory by pressing the "Directory" button at the top of the screen and typing in the correct directory.
Excess materiel from USAREUR units has gone to support various programs, including some non-Army programs such as the Humanitarian Assistance Program and Foreign Military Sales. More importantly, excess materiel has been used extensively to fill equipment-on-hand shortages in other units throughout USAREUR. Excess equipment also has been used to fill equipment requirements for contingency operations such as Operations Joint Endeavor, Joint Guard, and Joint Forge in Bosnia and Task Force Able Sentry in Macedonia.
While great strides have been made in USAREUR to reduce our excess, we know that excess will never go away. Authorization documents change as we modernize and improve our MTOE's. Our challenge is to continue to ensure that there is command emphasis on the reduction of that excess and to continue to be good stewards of Army resources. ALOG
Captain Augustine A. Olive is assigned to the Supply Division, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, U.S. Army, Europe, where he manages the Theater Excess Management Program. A Quartermaster officer, he holds a B.S. degree in business administration and is working on a master's degree in public administration.