Defense Logistics Chief Highlights Benefits of Change.

These are exciting times at the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), according to its director. "I always say, 'I can't believe they pay me to do this,'" joked Army Lt. Gen. Henry T. Glisson, during an interview at Fort Belvoir, Va. Joking aside, "for a guy who's a logistician, it doesn't get any better than this job. So it's really been fun."

Now, in the final five months of his four-year term as head of DLA, Glisson shared some of the highlights of the job. During his tenure, he has overseen a decline in paperwork, the rise of electronic commerce and his organization's ongoing struggle to implement a commercial supply-chain management system designed to get supplies to the military services as soon as they need them. DLA's vision statement for the 21st century, DLA-21, stipulates that such a system should be in place in 2004.

DLA has learned from experiences of the commercial sector, said Glisson, in trying to develop the automated supply-chain system. But even more so, the agency has looked at what has taken place in the medical community. Progress has been made, he said, to automate distribution of certain supplies, but a common system that works across military service borders is still in the works.

"We went to the medical community, and we said, 'how do you [perform] medical resupply for your customers?' And what we saw was they had their own system. It was an electronic system with electronic orders, and we basically took their system, and we brought it into the Department of Defense."

The system is called "prime vendor," and it has been successful in getting food to the military services, said Glisson. "We found that it worked in some instances for clothing and textiles," he added. "And we found small successes, not very many, in repair parts. We found that in the repair parts industry, there really wasn't a closely knit segment in the economy that managed [them]. ... For those instances where we couldn't take the commercial model, what we basically said is 'we'll create one'--what we call a 'virtual prime vendor'. With virtual prime vendor, we take the best of industry and the best of government, and we kind of merge them together in some sort of partnership arrangement, so that we try to gain the same sort of efficiencies that we did under the prime vendor concept.

"It's an area [where] we have much more to do, and that's in the area of aircraft repair parts, electronics, those sort of items."

Glisson began working with DLA in 1993, at the agency's supply center in Philadelphia. "There was no such thing [as electronic commerce] in 1993," he commented.

As DLA director, Glisson oversaw the opening of the Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office (JECPO), which encourages paperless contracting throughout the Defense Department. In three years, JECPO has generated $170 million in electronic sales. The Defense Department is working towards a goal of having all payments be electronic.

"If I had to narrow it down to the things I think DLA has done well and for which I am most proud," said Glisson, "it's the culture change, ... it's the business-process reengineering and the embracing of new business practices and use of commercial means of doing business, the way that we've embraced electronic commerce to try to find better, faster ways of doing our business, and a commitment that [the Pentagon has made to DLA] about existing to provide what we say is, 'the right item, at the right place, at the right time, at the right price, and do that every time! So in order to do that, we have to find better, faster, lower-cost ways of doing business, and we have to become more efficient and effective."

During Glisson's term at DLA, people throughout the Defense Department have had to learn an entirely new way of doing business as digital files replaced paper. Glisson praised the DLA staff for adapting to change.

"There are probably few organizations in the department that can say that they have over 50 Hammer awards for reinvention," he boasted. "I think that's a real tribute to this workforce in DLA. We're changing the way that we do business. ...That's the story of DLA, and I think that's the story for the department ... But [DLA personnel are] awfully innovative, awfully resilient, and they're all great patriots, and they want to support people in uniform."

DLA At-a-glance

* Headquarters: Fort Belvoir, Va.

* Director: Army Lt. Gen. Henry T. Glisson

* Annual Budget: Approximately $17 billion

* Mission: Manage supplies and spare parts for the Defense Department and the military services

* Volume of Supplies: Four million consumable items

* Volume of Transactions: Thirty million distribution actions

* Staff: 28,600

* Facilities/Installations: More than 500

* Presence in the United States: In all 50 states

* Presence outside the United States: In 27 countries

* Role in E-Commerce: DLA oversees the Defense Department's Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office