Changing the Defense Transportation System in Order to Complement Best Practice in Supply Chain Management
Distribution managers need to come to the realization that defense supply chain management is a worldwide phenomenon that is fast and that there is an overlap in the management levels; from strategic national stakeholders to the sustainment units below. Changes in strategic distribution decisions can have profound effect tactical implications. This paper seeks to back globally responsive logistical decisions. Material and distribution managers should study and internalize the defense supply chain model early enough in their careers. Distribution is a complex process. Therefore, material distribution managers should incorporate electronically sustainable information systems in order to realize true synchronization (Velasquez et al., 2015).
Problem Statement
To safeguard efficiency and ensure operations' effectiveness simultaneously, members of the armed forces should focus on their central competencies and make use of modern types of financing and cooperation. Such initiatives as the Public Private Partnership Initiatives have expressed such trends. The initiative has seen a broad application in a variety of systems across the globe (Hartley, 2002). It is clear that defense equipment has a lot of potential. The armed forces do not have sufficient tools for management that can inspire them to seek long-term relationships that traditionally characterize the market for defense equipment.
Literature Review
According to Melnyk et al. (2010), an effective supply chain management system should constitute one or several of the following six strategic outcomes, i.e. responsiveness, security, cost, resilience, sustainability and innovation. The investment that firms make is inspired by their desired outcomes. The outcomes are applied at various levels to most supply chains. Defense supply chains are unique and usually base their primary outcomes on responsiveness. This is the capacity and ability of a supply chain to react effectively to changes in demand and, customer location and product mix. This effectively maps the central objective of the defense teams, that is, readiness. Research in close loop supply chains, according to Guide and Van Wassenhove (2009) uses either of the two crucial methods:
Profit maximization that is driven by the market or Waste stream cost of compliance reduction
These are views that live true to the regulatory and economic realities in the U.S. and most European countries respectively. It has also been observed that an organization that solely focuses on profits develops a different pattern of sourcing and supply relationships. (Fleischmann et al., 2001). This is different from an organization that has its eyes on compliance to environmental regulatory restrictions.
This paper introduces and explores a third closed-loop objective of the supply chain as defined by defense forces. It illustrates how focusing on readiness influences the final design of the supply chain. Readiness, in the military's point-of-view, is the ability to fight and satisfy the demands of the military strategy nationally (U.S. Department of Defense 2010). The aspect of readiness requires enhanced capabilities of manpower training, sustainable equipment and weapon systems. The paper combines the central strategic outcome with the strategic options on the necessary capabilities to obtain such an outcome (Wilhite et al., 2014).
A lot of the closed-loop supply chain information emanates from the military practices that required stocking items for aircraft. Some of these could be repaired right at the field unit while the rest were consigned for the central depot for repair or disposal (Guide and Srivastava 1997). A system that sets an inventory for repair parts for the Air force was invented by Sherbrooke (1968). It was referred to as METRIC. There was subsequent research that refined his estimation for a multilevel echelon system that facilitated transshipments. According to a study by Fisher and Brennan (1986), as relates to the cannibalization of equipment for spare parts limited, cannibalization is acceptable in certain conditions. However, complete cannibalization isn't so acceptable.
A multi-echelon inventory theory was studied by Demmy and Presutti (1981) where repair funds are limited, and it is clear that they were also motivated by the of Air Force Logistics Command. Closed-loop Chain concerns in private markets have also been guided by these studies. A broader study on the returns, policies and their impact on the general performance were conducted by Ostlin, Sundin, and Bjorkman (2008). Lieckens and Vandaele (2012), explored the complex aspects of the supply chain design with respect to collecting, producing, transporting and uncertain supply. Process times that are uncertain and unknown or unforeseen translate to quality decline. Matters relating to sourcing parts that are...
It was established that the military does not have market competition; therefore, incentives that are based on the market are irrelevant. Secondly, the military is in charge of the return processes. Therefore, the spent cost is returned to base and it subsequently directs them to the manufacturing units. Thirdly, the military is part of the manufacturing process. RFID is now a reality in many sectors. These include but not limited to the public sector, production and even the retail sector.
The Radio Frequency Identification Technology warehouse for data should have sufficient data that will influence making decisions. Supply chains are dynamic business entities. Therefore, it may help to learn from historical data that usually has less than optimum information. The environments are known to exhibit variables in the demand for products, product characteristics, supply levels, characteristics of the available machines and plans for production (Velasquez et al., 2015).
Developing appropriate business rules is a key element to ensuring that such a system is successfully implemented. While it provides options to automate the input of data in the prevailing business processes, RFID provides opportunities to create business models that are innovative. Common activities in supply chain and the ability to establish time location and time of reading from items that are unique will present a chance to point out the shortcomings and barriers (Niederman et al., 2007).
Such information is particularly useful in influencing delivery priorities in situations where resources are constrained. If one can establish the precise location of a product at any given time it would solve a lot of issues, including shortening the time it takes to recall products and removing outdated products and more. Further, the ability to locate the inventories for products helps to shorten the time between points of conveyance from the production floor, warehouse and the showroom. RFID is useful in clustering information of small consignments from various sources channeled in the same direction in the earlier stages of the distributions process or even automate rerouting even as information relating to conditions of travel change along the line (Liqin, 2014).
Handling change of systems is one obvious challenge. Designing and structuring of RFID messaging, while simultaneously relooking at the business processes and the support system for IT is not a straight forward process. Balancing effort and innovation along with the pursuit of strategies to attain competitive advantage is the pivotal issue from a management perspective. The cost of dealing with RFID-generated data will be tangible while the gains are hinged on the quality of data collection. These will remain intangible for the most part, but will be recovered in the business cycle later. Furthermore, the firms that are aggressively focused on analysis and reordering of business processes, will find that risking improvement will be too hard to achieve or even near-impossible to implement (Niederman et al., 2007; Liqin, 2014).
Conclusion
There are some steering tools basically meant for the private sector and can be revealed by looking at the classic supply chain management. The armed forces, however, has specific unique aspects that demonstrate the non-adoption of the prevailing supply chain tools. Therefore, the literature gaps relate to the tools, procedure and the approaches for defense transport systems and the efficient and secure management of supply chain within the military. It would be foolhardy to leave supply chain capabilities to sheer chance. Emergency plays an essential part in supply chain but a focused and purposeful action is central to the final outcomes of emergent design Rungtusanatham (2001). Leveraging the positive outcomes of the design of the supply chain can present strategic advantages to the business. Life systems for the long-term such as weapons within the defense supply chains face a specific and unique set of challenges. TOC in these environments is related to product development, cost of deployment and the sustainable costs for the long-term; at which level is ideal and sufficient to maintain the systems over a period of time in closed-loop supply chain mode. These are usually high costs in which a qualified group of suppliers is limited, leading to a reduced competition in pricing and a high TOC. This study has highlighted the point at which it is the best interest of an organization such as the defense forces to grow its internal capabilities to compete with the suppliers outside in order to purposefully cut…
