Container Management: A Necessary Strategy for Improved Efficiencies

The DoD mismanaged the containers used in support of Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 11 years, costing the taxpayer over 750 million in detention charges and container buyouts. The entire DoD container management system requires an extensive and holistic evaluation. This paper proposes 26 recommended initiatives divided into three categories - near-term between now and the end of FY13, mid-term FY14-FY15, and long-term beyond FY15, with an end state of avoiding these unnecessary costs in future operations. The basic strategy is to first keep the management aspect of containers in logistics units exclusively, and to treat this as a simple logistics problem determine requirements, capabilities, and shortfalls, then develop a plan. The requirements are determined by the Army container strategy, and the capabilities are unknown until DoD gets an accurate container inventory. The recent bi-annual inventory located only 82 of the government-owned containers worldwide. Only 25 of the containers in theater are drawing detention, and the monthly DoD goal for detention costs is 750,000 we can do better than that, and this paper proposes several solutions for consideration.