Air Force Supply

Improvements Needed in Management of Air Mobility Command's Forward Supply System Gao ID: NSIAD-93-10 July 21, 1993

The Air Force stocks more spare parts than it needs at overseas forward supply locations. When establishing parts requirements for new weapon systems, adding quantities for forward supply locations duplicates the requirements based on expected failure rates and flying hours. For the C-17 aircraft, these additional requirements boosted the Air Force's budget request for initial provisioning in fiscal year 1993 by $10 million. Although cuts in initial provisioning funding for fiscal year 1993 resulted in no money for forward supply support that year, Air Force officials project that $50.6 million in spares for forward support locations will be procured during the C-17 initial provisioning period. When parts wear out and must be replaced, usage data from forward supply locations are being reported to the Air Force's requirements system in a way that duplicates the requirements previously set by the Air Force Mobility Command. This reporting results in a double counting of requirements. As of November 1992, the $90 million in inventory at forward supply locations exceeded what is normally needed by about $18 million.

GAO found that: (1) spare part inventory levels at overseas forward supply locations often exceed computed demand levels because the Air Force adds quantities during initial provisioning, which results in overstated budget estimates and unnecessary inventories; (2) the Air Force's requirements system increases the procurement of unnecessary inventories because usage data used to reorder replacement parts often report duplicate requirements; (3) if the Air Force limits forward supply levels to quantities supported by actual demand, it could reduce worldwide stock levels by $17.9 million; and (4) the Air Force lacks a clear policy that addresses overstated or duplicative usage requirements reporting.

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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