Military Department Requirements for Currently Procured Wholesale Inventories for Consumable Items

The Military Departments have 13 major inventory control points ICPs that provide logistics support to military customers to maximize the operational readiness of weapon systems and supply availability while at the same time maintain a minimum investment in inventory. In August 1989, the Military Departments ICPs managed approximately 1.1 million consumable line items for which wholesale inventories valued at 13.1 billion were held. In August 1989, the ICPs were in the process of procuring approximately 3.5 billion of stock for 77,650 consumable line items. The procurement process at the ICPs generally begins when the automated requirements computation system determines that the assets on hand and due in for an item have dropped to or below the items reorder point. The automated system recommends the purchase of a quantity of materiel sufficient to refill the items stockage objective. The inventory manager reviews the requirements computation and other relevant data to verify the accuracy of the computation and, when appropriate, initiates a purchase request. The purchase request, as approved by supervisory personnel, serves as the authorization for the procurement organization to buy the materiel. In July 1990, DOD approved a plan to transfer the management of most of the Military Departments managed consumable line items to the Defense Logistics Agency. The transfer was scheduled to commence in March 1991 and is to be completed in September 1994.