Army Inventory

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed 13 Army retail-level activities' inventory management, focusing on the extent to which the activities identified and reported inventory excesses to the wholesale level for return to the supply system.

GAO found that: (1) the retail activities generally did not comply with Army regulations that they report excess inventory; (2) the 13 retail activities had $184 million in excess inventory of about 24,000 line items, and about $33 million in shortages of about 6,300 line items; (3) the wholesale system's lack of visibility and control of retail-level inventory resulted in both wholesale and retail activities' lack of awareness of other activities' excess inventory; (4) wholesale activities lacked authority to direct retail activities to distribute their excess inventory to retail activities with shortages; (5) the Army's inability to redistribute excess inventory adversely affected units' ability to maintain equipment in operable condition; (6) the wholesale activities had 6,116 outstanding high-priority requisitions that the 13 retail activities' excess inventory could address; (7) the 3 commands responsible for buying 23 percent of the inventory at the 13 retail activities had $66.9 million in ongoing procurement actions for 1,669 items that were in excess at the 13 retail activities; (8) Army efforts to address the excess inventory problems focused on increasing redistribution among retail activities within the same theater; and (9) the Army has not reported its long-standing, significant excess inventory issue as a material weakness in its annual report on internal controls.

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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