Life-Cycle Management - Army Logistics University - U.S. Army

Retrograde cargo, much of it in improperly
processed and labeled containers, sits in the
retrograde area of the multiclass yard. Some of the
containers have multiple labels all over them (inset).
container. When this happened, the unserviceable
major assembly was shipped back to the CDC. Because
about 1,000 major assemblies pass through the
CDC each month, we missed some of those that were
labeled improperly, and they were sent back to the SSA
that had retrograded them 2 weeks earlier.
One thing we did to stop these reshipments was
enforce the procedure for processing retrograde
through SARSS. We notified the SSAs that we would
no longer receive undocumented or unprocessed retrograde
cargo starting 1 July 2004. By the end of July,
the quantity of undocumented or unprocessed retrograde
cargo had dropped dramatically.
A redistribution warehouse with an active SARSS
was set up in Balad in an effort to save time and money.
SSAs can ship serviceable or excess stocks there rather
than back to the warehouses in Kuwait. “Orphaned”
and found-on-installation stocks (items on hand but not
on any unit’s hand receipt) can be sent to the redistribution
warehouse for processing rather than to the CDC.
The main area of the CDC multiclass yard is devoted
to cargo lanes. The 7th Corps Support Group’s 71st
Corps Support Battalion from Bamberg, Germany, and
the 372d Cargo Transfer Company from Fort Bragg,
North Carolina, had done a good job setting up six
lanes. Each lane is designated for use by certain SSAs
or service areas. Now, empty trailers are staged in the
lanes, and incoming cargo is transloaded from sustainer
trucks to the trailers in the appropriate lane.
Onward Movement Yard
As part of the new CDC operation plan, we stood up
a loaded-trailer staging area that we call the CDC onward
movement yard. When trailers are fully loaded
and documented, they are staged in this yard. This
helps the transportation units that are building convoys
by allowing them to come in and hook up to the appropriate
trailer without having to wait to be uploaded.
Because this new setup works so well, we are now
preloading class I. We know that 10 to 20 class I trailers
are needed each day, so we try to keep as many of
them staged as possible. This has increased the efficiency
of the yard even further. Moving cargo directly
onto trailers dramatically cuts the time required to
process a convoy. Before, it took 6 to 12 hours to
process a convoy because CONEXs and pallets had to
be moved to make space for new ones coming in. Now,
it is just a matter of moving cargo from one trailer to
another. Because of the reduced processing time, trans-
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portation units spend less time at the CDC and more
time on the road. They now can move more cargo without
more equipment or personnel. There is less wear
and tear on equipment, and, since most of the cargo is
never set on the ground, there is less gravel and dirt on
the pallets and in the trailers. Cargo is now being handled
only once instead of multiple times.
Automation
We knew we needed to automate the CDC if we
were ever to have an economical operation. The number
of misdirected shipments and reshipped commodities
was just too high. Operating independently of
other logistics nodes was costing us too many
resources, so we decided that we could justify the costs
associated with improving our communication system.
We now have two Transportation Coordinator’s
Automated Information for Movements System II
(TC–AIMS II) machines in the CDC that we use to
burn tags and print MSLs. We also have a mobile
Deployment Asset Visibility System (DAVS) that we
use to interrogate RFID tags without a hard connection
to the Internet or a power supply. We use it to “look
inside” a container to get the consignee information
MARCH–APRIL 2005