2005 SDDC Training Symposium: commander vows to enhance deployment, quality of life.

Improving deployment and quality of life for service members and their families are the goals of various initiatives underway by the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, Maj. Gen. Charles Fletcher said May 27 in Nashville, Tenn.

The SDDC commander spoke to military and commercial transportation professionals at the command's annual training symposium.

Many of the initiatives involve leveraging technology and looking to commercial industry to improve processes, Fletcher told the more than 1,600 attendees at the Opryland Hotel.

The No. 1 objective for the command is simplifying deployment for units, he said.

"We in SDDC are really a service provider and our core competency is information management," Fletcher said. "So we've got to start with improving the accuracy of source-data capture by simplifying deployment and putting our people at the units to support the installation transportation offices."

Information management tools are helping improve asset visibility, including the complex task of global container management, Fletcher said. The command is looking at how to improve its personnel structure, information systems, policies and processes to better manage the 20- and 40-foot shipping boxes.

The Families First initiative is a partnership with the household goods industry, transportation offices and the military services to find better solutions for family moves.

"We need to make sure that we provide quality service during household goods moves because (DOD) recruits Soldiers but retains families," Fletcher said.

Other initiatives include SURFEX, an exercise in Hawaii in May that built on a previous Military Sealift Command exercise.

The MSC exercise tested how the Navy command would generate the vessels required to support a crisis or contingency in the Pacific.

SURFEX was intended to take the MSC experiment one step further, Fletcher said, to examine infrastructure and industry capabilities, including that of port labor, the Maritime Administration, the commercial trucking, rail and ocean carrier industries, and West-Coast ports.

"We want to understand the challenges today so we can work on solutions for tomorrow," he said.

A terrain-walk in Kuwait is planned for SDDC's commercial partners to help them understand the complexities and physical security environment of moving sustainment equipment. It's all part of the command's efforts to develop a dialog with commercial partners and open the door for more industry involvement in deploying and redeploying cargo, Fletcher said.

The Seaport Operations Center concept, which is being tested at the ports of Philadelphia and Charleston, is seeking ways to better integrate all of the agencies involved in a port operation.

"It's recognizing that a seaport is a place where you must consider the threat and the economics at the same time," said Fletcher. "It includes SDDC, Homeland Security, commerce, the Coast Guard, local police, port authorities, unions, ocean carriers, and all of those major players that have an interest."

A number of other initiatives are looking at commercial best practices, including electronic end-gate processes, which track cargo entering and leaving commercial rail, seaport and other transportation nodes.

To further increase asset visibility, the command hopes to increase data exchange with commercial industry, Fletcher said.

"There is a lot more in the databases of our commercial partners that would be of great interest to us," he said. "We'd like to look at tapping those databases--and perhaps doing it both ways, so that you could see our requirements--so we can develop a smarter way for us to work together, database to database."

Finally, the command is interested in finding ways to increase third-party logistics in areas where commercial entities can safely operate.

Admitting that not all of the initiatives may work out, Fletcher said he takes great solace in the fact that no experiment is ever a complete failure.

"We're going to pursue these things and see how far we can go." he said. "If it doesn't work, we'll turn around and we'll try it again."