Army Inventory

GAO reviewed the termination of planned procurements at the Tank-Automotive Command (TACOM), one of the Army's national inventory control points, and found that TACOM was missing opportunities to terminate or reduce planned procurements. Item managers and procurement specialists did not always confer before awarding contracts. Without communication, procurement personnel may be unaware of new considerations that could affect the need for the procurement. Item managers, in deciding whether to implement the requirement system's recommended commitment termination or reduction, often changed the requirements data to bring the requirements and inventory into balance. In other instances, item managers relied on invalid, out-of-date, or unverified data in deciding whether to implement the system's recommendation. GAO's analysis of 31 sample items randomly selected from the universe of 136 items that were in long supply and had items due as of September 1993 found that procurements valued at nearly $800,000 could have been terminated. Procurements could be reduced as much as $21.5 million annually if September 1993 was a representative month and if the recommended commitment cutbacks were made when they first appeared.

GAO found that: (1) TACOM is missing opportunities to terminate or reduce planned procurements because item managers and procurement specialists do not always confer before awarding contracts; (2) item managers often arbitrarily change requirements data to bring their requirements and inventory into balance and rely on invalid, out-of-date, or unverified data; and (3) TACOM procurements could be reduced by as much as $21.5 million annually if recommended commitment cutbacks are made when they first appear.

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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