WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- The U.S. military is working on improving its supply-chain operations, but a report Wednesday indicated it can't tell for certain how well it is going.
The Government Accountability Office said in its report to a Senate oversight subcommittee that the Department of Defense (DoD) has not developed a suitable means of measuring the success of its ongoing overhaul.
"It is unclear how much progress its actions have resulted in because the plan generally lacks outcome-focused performance metrics that track progress," the GAO said in the report.
In addition, the GAO said the Pentagon did not have a target date for completion of the revamp, nor has it appointed a senior department official to oversee the entire program. The report also recommended speeding up the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags on equipment, and clarifying the point at which procurement projects become an urgent need that deserves to be fast-tracked, such as the recent crash program to up-armor military vehicles deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The improvement to the supply chain is currently focused generally on reducing back orders as well as the time it takes to generate a procurement order and get the goods to where they are needed.
The DoD concurred with the GAO's draft report. However officials said progress was slow in part due to ongoing testing of new logistics-management capabilities.
