Defense Inventory
DOD Needs to Continue Efforts to Improve Its Requirements Determination and Ordering Processes Gao ID: T-NSIAD-92-16 March 11, 1992GAO believes that Congress should discourage the Defense Department (DOD) from buying items that it does not need or sooner than it needs them so as to avoid having large amounts of unrequired inventory on hand. In this testimony on DOD's inventory management, GAO discusses five areas that have been plagued with long-standing problems. These areas include the following: not using excess retail inventories to reduce requirements, not terminating contracts for excess-on-order materials, buying spare parts too early, excessive lead times resulting in buying too much, and not reducing buys when unserviceable assets could be repaired cheaper than buying new items.