Depot Maintenance: Army Report Provides Incomplete Assessment of Depot-Type Capabilities

The Army concurred with the recommendation and in January 2000 issued its Depot Maintenance Enterprise Strategic Plan. As recommended, the plan includes clarifying guidance that will enable the Army to better identify the magnitude and cost effectiveness of its depot maintenance system. The plan specifies that depot maintenance-type work is to be split between a variety of organizations and activities--including regular inhouse depots, private sector contractors, and military units in both the active duty and reserve components. Further, the strategic plan provides goals and timeliness for developing and implementing 20 individual action plans to improve the efficiency of the Army's combined depot maintenance operations to include a framework and schedule for the Army to begin managing its depot maintenance workload as a whole.

To minimize the adverse impact from the proliferation of depot maintenance work conducted at field locations, the Army issued a July 1999 policy memorandum documenting its intentions to centrally manage all of its future depot maintenance workload assignments. Subsequently, in January 2000 the Army issued its Depot Maintenance Enterprise Strategic Plan which included goals, performance measures and clear timeframes for developing action plans to assess depot maintenance requirements from a national Army-wide perspective. As suggested, the strategic plan provides a framework for a single national maintenance manager to assess the capabilities of maintenance organizations under the active duty and reserve component forces and ultimately identify opportunities for consolidating and reducing unneeded maintenance infrastructure. As a part of its implementation of this plan, the Army is implementing a depot overhaul program intended to improve the capability of fielded systems that have not undergone major overhauls or upgrades in recent years. A side benefit of this program, which will mostly be performed in the inhouse depots, is the increased utilization of the inhouse depot system.

The Army's January 2000 Depot Maintenance Enterprise Strategic Plan includes goals, objectives and action plans for managing the Army's depot maintenance workload as a whole, in lieu of the previous management process which was fragmented between various organizational entities. In addition, the Strategic Plan provided goals and objectives for developing a requirements process that allows all customers, including those from the active duty and reserve components, to submit their requirements forecasts to a single organizational entity.