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# Consumable item growth at DLA: From 39% to 67%

By Colin J. WilliamsDLA Historian

                FORT BELVOIR, Va.  –              
*Editor's Note: This is the first story in a two-part historical series on DLA's journey to managing most consumable items for the services. Read the second half: Consumable item growth at DLA: From 67% to ‘Almost All’**.*

A cataloging decision made long before the Defense Logistics Agency existed divides military material into two groups: primary items, which can function on their own, and secondary items, which cannot. Secondary items are further divided into things that explode, such as ammunition; things that can be repaired, known as reparables; and things destroyed during use, called consumables. DLA has been managing consumables such as blankets, fuel oils and photographic film ever since receiving seven commodity supply centers in 1962.

                240618-D-YE683-003                            This chart shows DOD item responsibilities as of March 5, 1981, according to a DLA fact sheet.            SHARE IMAGE:Download ImageImage DetailsPhoto By: Paul Henry CrankVIRIN: 240618-D-YE683-003DLA started assuming consumables slowly. Charged by the Office of the Secretary of Defense with identifying items susceptible to integrated management, the agency examined both those in the federal catalog and those awaiting entry. While DLA ended up managing much of what it examined, the services kept some and were given others. Still, the balance was in DLA’s favor and, over the next two decades, the agency’s share of consumables rose to 56%.

Acceleration replaced accretion in 1982. The rapid transfer of hundreds of thousands of items during seven months of that year belied long preparation spanning two presidential administrations. The process began December 1977 when Assistant Defense Secretary Robert B. Pirie Jr. proposed three options for consolidating military consumables under DLA: one for 292,000 items, another for 1,125,000 and a third for 1,353,000. The Army and Air Force, doubting the agency could realize the $124 million in annual savings Pirie thought it could, opposed all options. The Navy was more amenable, willing to transfer 358,700 of 520,000 consumables.

DLA leaders knew large transfers required organizational change and full acceptance by the services. Organizationally, the agency had to adjust how it distributed consumable management among its supply centers and update the Standard Automated Materiel Management System, its ordering, inventory and payment platform. Full acceptance by the services was necessary for purging inactive items, one way DLA was expected to achieve efficiency.  

                240618-D-D0441-0001                            Air Force Lt. Gen. Gerald Post, DLA’s sixth director, poses for a photograph. Post prepared the agency to receive its first large transfer of consumable items, although delays pushed execution back to the tenure of his successor, Navy Vice Adm. Eugene Grinstead.            SHARE IMAGE:Download ImageImage DetailsPhoto By: File photoVIRIN: 240618-D-D0441-0001These issues took time to settle. It was not until summer 1980 that Air Force Lt. Gen. Gerald Post, DLA's sixth director, started preparing the agency to receive up to 1,353,000 items. Even then, Post acted too soon. A change in presidential administrations forced Assistant Secretary Pirie out of office in January 1981. His replacement, not confirmed until May, was Lawrence Korb. Korb yielded to service concerns and reduced the transfer to 206,000 items.

Transferring 206,000 consumables was still a massive task. DLA representatives established new relationships with manufacturers and met service logisticians to coordinate receipt. In January 1982, the Defense Logistics Services Center issued reassignment instructions and responsibilities began to change hands.

The 1982 transfer was remembered as being frictionless. A presentation five years later reminded Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger that, “in 1982 alone, ... the military departments willingly transferred management of some 200,000 consumable items to DLA and expressed no desire to have them returned.” As Senator Carl Levin noted at the time, however, the process was more contentious. The Navy and DLA, for example, could not agree who was responsible for technical data.

Whether the 1982 transfer was conducted willingly or not, the fact it was remembered as such prompted agency and service leaders to agree on further transfers. Whereas Korb’s 1981 decision increased DLA’s consumable share from 56% to 63%, follow-on transfers bumped it to 67% by the end of 1991. Subsequent transfers were also remembered well, perhaps because they capped three decades in which the agency’s growth in this item category had been, 1982 notwithstanding, modest.

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Consumable item growth at DLA: From 67% to ‘Almost All’

consumable itemsreparablescatalogingprimary itemssecondary itemsrepair partsspareshistoryDLA History