Opportunities To Improve the Navy's Retrograde Materials Program

A review was undertaken of the Navy's retrograde distribution program. Specifically, GAO evaluated the retrograde of reparable items to determine if components were being returned by the most economical mode of transportation and if these components were being repaired in a timely manner.

In its review, GAO found that the Naval Air Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet had not reported about $44 million of excess reparable and consumable material to the Aviation Supply Office, the cognizant inventory manager for these items. Additionally, GAO found that: (1) a lack of discipline on the part of item managers in the Aviation Supply Office to follow established policies and procedures contributed to the backlog of items awaiting repair parts; (2) about $2 million of the combined $17 million in inventory carried in Naval Industrial Fund Inventory Record store accounts, which provide support to the repair shops, has not been reported for disposition even though it is classified as excess; (3) identical items were stocked in several stores; (4) some stores were exceeding their authorized stock levels and storing stocks which were not authorized; (5) unauthorized supplies held by some stores were needed and on-order at stores authorized to carry the items; (6) management reports of the total time needed to repair an item did not include time awaiting parts for that time which exceeded 30 days; and (7) the computer system at the Aviation Supply Office could not match the various segments of data received to arrive at a breakdown for total repair cycle time.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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