Army Inventory

Army Annually Spends Millions to Keep Retention-Level Stocks Gao ID: NSIAD-90-236 September 11, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information about the Army's retention of inventory in excess of its current operating and war reserve needs.

GAO found that: (1) the Army Aviation Systems Command, one of six national inventory control points (ICP), had retention-level inventory valued at about $1 billion, and retained many times the amount of inventory that was reasonably required to support end items; (2) 50 percent of the retention-level inventory was at least twice as large as needed; (3) item managers did not document the reasons for retaining contingency and numeric inventories, but instead accepted the retention levels determined by a computer program; (4) the large retention-level inventories were costly to store and manage, and reduced supply efficiency; (5) the Army has taken actions to reduce its retention-level inventory; (6) the lack of system documentation contributes to difficulty in fixing systemic problems; and (7) the database that item managers relied upon to make retention decisions included inaccurate data and lacked some necessary data.

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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