Recommendations: an interview with MTMC's Commanding General.

Q. At the end of August, you briefed the Commander-in-Chief, USTRANSCOM, on the recommended personal property program for the future. What can you share with us about your recommendations?

A. As most know, DoD has sponsored several pilots the past five years. CINCTRANSCOM had the responsibility for reviewing the results of those pilots, and providing recommendations to the Secretary of Defense for an improved program for the future. He provided those broad recommendations in June, and then asked us in MTMC to provide him with a more detailed execution plan with cost implications, so that Services could budget for improvements in years ahead.

Our staff worked hard with Service and industry representatives to develop that plan, which I briefed to the CINC the last week of August. The plan has about 140 action items phased through FY05, with an overall estimated annual cost increase of 13 percent. Included therein are provisions for full-value replacement when damages occur during moves and direct claims settlement with the transportation provider (versus the government), up to a maximum of $50,000, at which time the government would get involved.

We are trying to use commercial practices wherever possible. Thus, the program adopts the commercial tariff rate base. It awards distribution based on best value versus traditional low cost. We recommend that best value be determined 70 percent by performance and 30 percent by cost.

Service members will become key to determining performance, because they will be providing feedback to a third party, who will compile the results.

We also are encouraging Services to take actions to facilitate more door-to-door moves for families. Most families want a door-to-door move, but few of us get one, because various processes involved in moving are not synchronized. We must fix that. Few commercial moves go into temporary storage. We in DoD spend $250 million each year on temporary storage! And as you may know, the more often you handle household goods, the more damage is likely. Claims charges aren't included in that $250 million either. The advantages of door-to-door moves are many.

We expect to leverage the Web a lot. We want families to be able to plan and track their moves over the Web where possible. And we will be replacing our present information supporting system with a new one, leveraging a world-class product with a proven performance record.

There is much more I could talk about. I would recommend that others read the lengthy article in this issue of TRANSLOG for more information. I am very excited about the prospects of real change soon. We have a good plan now. Services need to belly up to their bars to produce money in their budgets. Everything hinges on that at this point. I hope Services work their budgets smartly, so our military families can experience the benefits of this new program as projected.

Q. What industry trends or processes do you think will influence MTMC in coming years?

A. We are going to see the continued development of multi-modal partnerships, both in CONUS and worldwide, that will leverage technology end to end--and in the process keep customers more informed.

There are too many hand-offs today, particularly for international shipments. I am not just talking about transportation firms. I am talking suppliers as well. I see a future with greater collaboration, longer partnerships, and shared profits based on success. Today, many transportation providers are only focused on their segment, and because that is true, they often suboptimize the end-to-end pipeline that serves the customer. Customers are getting tired of hand-offs. They are going to demand fewer faces, and they will want to get to know the names of those faces well into the future. And they really won't give a hoot whether the person they are talking to is located in New Jersey, Oregon, or even overseas. Location is invisible to customers in today's new information age. Thus, I see a continued trend toward third- and fourth-party solutions, not just from outside organizations, but often through the establishment of separate business areas within corporations. Those new entities will have great influence on traditional, stove-piped functional areas.

Finally, I would say that many people need to observe what is going on in the airline industry, where small, low-fare airlines are outpacing large airlines in performance and bottom lines. Customers are flocking to them because of low fares and good service. Small airlines have produced a new paradigm. Some big ones still don't understand that, and blame everything but themselves. A lesson from this is that size really doesn't matter--but complacency does.

Now, what does all this mean for MTMC? Some in our ranks had better become logisticians as well as transporters. Logisticians build total solutions. We need to understand supply chains. We need to get educated on supply chain management. We also need to anticipate a future where total solutions are offered to us as a matter of course. We must continue our emphasis on efficiency if we want to be around tomorrow. Also, and perhaps most importantly, we need to orient on our customers, from the time we arrive at work until we go home. And sometimes we need to be worrying about them when we go to bed. Customers are why we exist. I would recommend we start assuming they are right when we get up in the morning and start our days.

Q. What are you must proud of in your tenure at MTMC?

A. I am most proud of the people in this command. Much has been said about what we have achieved in the past several years. Some credit has come my way because of that; I would say too much. Whatever progress we have made is more the result of the rank-and-file in this command, those wonderful Department of Army civilians and soldiers who have smiled as changes were under way, and worked hard every day. I am also so very proud of the heroes in Personnel and Logistics, who have worked tirelessly to take care of employees who could have been impacted by our reorganizations. I just can't say enough about them.

I've never been part of a team that took on so much, so fast, and took care of each other so well. I won't remember much about the changes we produced. I will remember many of the wonderful people in MTMC units around the world who made it happen and asked for more to do. I will miss many employees.

Q. Where do you think MTMC will need to evolve in the future?

A. We need to understand better the influence of technology, and how it has diminished the importance of location in our global business.

The potential effects are far reaching. Technology will enable us to do more, faster and better; it will also enable us to make more decisions from afar. We will always need people at the edge of the spear, managing port operations. But the farther you get from war zones, the less true that is. At domestic locations, for sure, there is nothing we do today that commercial firms could not do. We need to ponder that and understand what it could mean. Our Deployment Support Teams differentiate us from the commercial sector. That's it. And so I challenge units to continually reassess bottom-line requirements. I urge everyone to understand that every person and unit needs to add specific, and in many cases, measurable value. Tough questions will continue to evolve over what we can centralize to better synchronize operations, making us even more effective, and at the same time, more efficient. We are on the correct path now in centralizing our support and operations functions.

The next question that needs to be asked is whether we should merge some of those functions with TRANSCOM's. We are bound by traditional structures and funding streams in the present CINCdom and Service component relationships. It's time to reassess things like that. Why shouldn't we become more of TRANSCOM?

For years we have prided ourselves in being a Major Army Command or MACOM. I would be the first to say that we are a MACOM in name only. The Army needs to redefine MACOMs in my opinion, and when they do, it could have some effect on us.

These are some of the things I see in the future. Let me add that we have a good track record for reflection. We have demonstrated in spades that we can take care of people while changing. Don't fear the future. Keep questioning what you see and become a force for change.