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Speeding the Flow
How the Army Cut Order-and-Ship Time
Excerpt: For decades, through peace and war, a catalog of stubborn performance problems plagued the Army's order-and-ship process, the system Army personnel use to order and receive supplies. Each segment of the process — from placing a requisition for an item to receiving the package and every step in between — was not only slow, but also unreliable. Order-and-ship times (OST) for orders varied widely; some orders were delivered in a few days, but others took weeks, even when the ordered items were in stock. A lack of confidence in the reliability of the order-and-ship process led some Army personnel to hoard supplies and place duplicate orders. The Army long recognized these chronic problems, but repeated efforts to identify and eliminate their sources proved ineffective.
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