'Common Sense' Tactics Suit Marines Corps' Business Plan.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

An unresponsive bureaucracy that delays repairs of equipment and deliveries of supplies for weeks and months makes for many frustrated Marines, says Col. Robert E. Love. But he avows that relief is on its way.

Love is the head of a year-old Marine Corps agency, with a staff of nine, created for the sole purpose of shrinking the bureaucracy that is to blame for poor customer service," he said in a recent interview.

Marines should not have to wait 57 days to have a truck fixed, nor should they have to operate the nearly 200 disparate computer systems that today are used to manage battlefield logistics, said Love. "Some of our young Marines know we can do better. ... They are frustrated with the system."

The organization created to overhaul the cumbersome logistics processes is called the Integrated Logistics Capability Center. Love was among a selected group of Marines "hand-picked" by Lt. Gen. Gary S. McKissock, the Corps' deputy commandant for installations and logistics.

"We selected Marines who were forward thinking, risk takers, not afraid of uncertainty, and comfortable with innovation. And we put them in charge," McKissock said in an interview at his Arlington, Va. office.

"My interest in logistics reform had its genesis in the Gulf War," he explained. "We watched the Army's 'iron mountain [of supplies]. We thought there was a more efficient way of doing it." At the core of logistics reform, McKissock believes, is the "smart" use of information technology and a lot of "common sense."

The Marine Corps often finds itself victim of the "tyranny of square and cube," he added. The term refers to the difficulties Marines have in finding enough space on ships to carry all their supplies. "We only have so much space on board ships. You have to be very precise in your planning," said McKissock. "It's a tyranny because we have to think about it all the time."

To get relief from that tyranny, he said, the Marine Corps needs to decide what equipment and personnel are essential to accomplish a given mission, and leave the rest back home.

Such an obvious solution to the problem would have been unrealistic years ago, before information systems revolutionized the way organizations manage inventories and deliveries, said McKissock. Since World War II, the U.S. military services have been told that, wherever they go, they must bring 60 days worth of supplies. "That was a reasonable approach, because we didn't have sophisticated means of distribution or communications. The use of mass made sense."

Today, supplies and requests for repairs can be tracked on a Web site. "We can identify the requirement much more efficiently," McKissock said, so there...