Defense ADP

Lessons Learned From Development of Defense Distribution System Gao ID: IMTEC-92-25 March 20, 1992

To help consolidate management of all military supply depots, the Defense Department (DOD) has developed a prototype of the Defense Distribution System. This system is intended to automate the receiving, storage, and shipping functions at the depots. GAO evaluated the system as a case study of DOD efforts to standardize automated systems under its Corporate Information Management Initiative. This report discusses whether (1) DOD demonstrated that the system's potential benefits exceed its costs, (2) the system's functional and technical merits justified its consideration as a departmentwide standard system, and (3) the system points to any significant problems that could affect DOD's other automated system standardization efforts.

GAO found that DOD: (1) based DDS on an integration of the Defense Logistics Agency's Warehousing and Shipping Procedures System and the Navy's Integrated Storage, Tracking, and Retrieval System, as well as portions of Army and Air Force warehousing systems; (2) spent about $20 million on DDS development and installation before CIM officials assessed it and selected another system, the Army's Area-Oriented Depot System, for consolidating depot management; (3) did not conduct the required cost-benefit analysis prior to selecting DDS and did not provide any cost-benefit or economic analysis to justify DDS as an interim standard system; (4) did not develop an overall implementation plan or detailed cost estimate for DDS, although its summary cost information indicated that full deployment of DDS could cost almost $100 million; (5) completed one technical evaluation of DDS, which raised several technical questions regarding DDS suitability as a standard system; and (6) lacks adequate data standards across its independently developed systems, making it difficult to test technical feasibility and integration potential.

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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