Defense Inventory

DLA and Navy Suspended Stocks Should Be Processed More Quickly Gao ID: NSIAD-91-8 March 14, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) secondary-item inventories to assess its efforts in minimizing stocks of unknown status, focusing on the extent to which required secondary-item stocks may be unessential.

GAO found that: (1) since 1984, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the Navy have made improvements in their efforts to minimize stock of unknown status, but they did not timely resolve the status of suspended stock; (2) DOD frequently kept suspended items beyond its time standards, since it did not consider resolving the items' status a high priority, include program guidance, or routinely follow existing guidance; (3) DLA personnel did not follow instructions for resolving the status of suspended stocks; (4) overall, stocks valued at about $50 million, or 49 percent of the sampled secondary items, remained suspended more than 6 months; (5) managers considered suspended items in making their procurement decisions after they determined their use, but managers' delays in resolving the status of suspended items could result in unnecessary procurements; and (6) DOD data indicated that it spent approximately $9 million per year to store suspended items.

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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