The MTMC of tomorrow: an interview with MTMC's Commanding General.

Q. We are now transitioning to a single MTMC headquarters in the continental United States. What does this mean to the MTMC of the future?

A. It means that MTMC will be postured to manage more effectively force projection and sustainment worldwide, from origin to destination. Our present organization simply does not lend itself to effective end-to-end movement management, which is our responsibility. Operations staffs are needlessly layered and fragmented between two headquarters in Virginia, about 150 miles apart, and between two overseas group headquarters.

There are too many hand-offs to get things done. There is too much confusion over who is responsible for various requirements. The MTMC of tomorrow will be far more effective in coordinating Department of Defense requirements worldwide. We have worked very hard over the past two years to centralize other staff functions--like personal property, personnel, logistics, resource management, and acquisition--for comparable reasons.

We are now centralizing responsibilities for operations. It just so happens that direct responsibility for operations will reside a little further south in Virginia, with the Deputy Commanding General for MTMC. Location is less important nowadays, given technology advances. We will see others in government and industry following our path in years ahead. Today's technological age demands new organizations with less bureaucracy. MTMC will be ahead of others.

Q. Changes in the Alexandria, Va., and Fort Eustis, Va., headquarters locations through June 30, 2003, will affect hundreds of MTMC employees. What general guidance can you provide them?

A. Be patient and let us work to take care of you. The initiative to centralize operations will lead to significant reductions in authorizations at MTMC Headquarters in Alexandria.

Although there have been some effects of streamlining at the Headquarters over the past two years, most of the direct personnel impact has occurred in subordinate units. I think it is important for everyone at the Headquarters to remember that, and also to reflect on the successes we produced in taking care of the MTMC team.

Last year at this time, nearly 100 of our employees faced involuntary separation. Because of much good work by our personnel specialists, the number being separated involuntarily has been reduced to fewer than 10, some of whom simply did not desire to relocate. That is a huge success story. Everyone should remember it. We will continue to do our best to take care of those affected by changes effective on June 30, 2003.

Q. MTMC has now modified the carrier qualification process to move Department of Defense freight to the Web. The Web seems to be the baseline of more and more of our processes. Will that continue?

A. Absolutely. Last spring I visited CSX in Dallas and came away impressed. Their goal this year is to book 75 percent of ocean cargo on line. That's a big deal and a major change in process. Others are trailing far behind, but will catch up eventually. There are many initiatives under way in MTMC and industry to push processes onto the Web like that, whether they are to book or trace cargo, determine rates, settle accounts, etc.

The Web is the future. About that there should be no doubt. The time for passing paper is over. The Web offers unprecedented speed for business processes as well as shared databases. The future will reward those who understand this and then leverage electrons and the efficiencies that result.

Q. What will be the result of the new Oracle Financial software being implemented in MTMC Resource Management?

A. Very simply put, it will enable us to see our balance sheets on a daily basis. For years we have struggled to make decisions based on financial information that was incomplete and often several months old. You cannot operate effectively like that, let alone make the best use of taxpayer dollars. Our new software will provide us near-real-time visibility over our accounts. When we couple that with another initiative well into development--Activity Based Cost Management--we will have the capability to make smarter business decisions because we will have a more accurate and timely picture of where we stand, not yesterday but today, and what everything costs. We expect both initiatives to be completed by next summer. We have several heroes in our ranks who are making it happen.

Q. As you enter the final year of your MTMC assignment, what thoughts and vision do you have?

A. I am amazed at how fast time has sped by. We truly have accomplished much over the past two years. We have a lot of enlightened change agents in our midst today, many produced by our professional development programs.

Now, I think our biggest obstacle for the future is ourselves. We must concentrate more on thinking what we need to be rather than what we want to be. These two mindsets are quite different. The former keeps you focused on your customers as you change with the world around you; the latter keeps you focused on yourself, often as the world passes you by. As we focus on what we need to be, I think we face three primary challenges in years ahead: To dominate information, to continue leveraging commercial capabilities wherever possible, and to redefine and embrace traffic management.

Traffic management perhaps deserves additional comment. We must start looking beyond day-today activities. Effective traffic management is more than just making things happen each day. Generally it's pretty easy to make things happen. It's much harder to make things happen better. Such is the true essence of traffic management. To serve customers better year after year, we must continually look back to discover sub optimization or negative trends, and then move forward deliberately to improve the situation. We in MTMC do not do this well. We tend to let auto pilot guide us. We must take over the controls and make the future better. That is what our customers expect. That is why we exist.