Air Force customers get inside look at DLA customer service

RICHMOND, Va. -

To improve coordination and understanding, a team from Defense Logistics Agency Aviation held a supply chain operations sync with their counterparts from Joint Base Langley-Eustis at Defense Supply Center Richmond March 5.

Coined as a "DLA Support to the Warfighter Sync" by Air Force Lt. Col. Heather McDaniel, deputy chief, Air Force Customer Facing Division, DLA Aviation, the organizers used this event to educate their customers from the 633rd Logistics Readiness Squadron and 438th Supply Chain Operations Group at JBLE.

"The Air Force career broadeners realized this was an opportunity to bring in Airmen from some of our customer organizations and provide them an in-depth look at how DLA Aviation is aligning its work to our customers' needs and responding," she said. "When planning the event, we took the DLA Strategic Plan and targeted the agenda to focus on two lines of effort. This tour provided a collaborative experience for our customers to have a better understanding of our program and processes, strengthening our strategic partnership, and promoting data sharing and transparency, as well as putting faces to the support they receive."

The lines of effort selected were: "Partner with customers at wholesale and retail levels to address service-specific challenges and develop solutions" and "Provide next-generation customer service, including a customer feedback mechanism."

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Maurice Jones II, an enlisted logistics career broadener in the Air Force Customer Facing Division, coordinated the "needed" event.

"There were several concepts and ideas that were revealed as important to tracking future demand levels," he said. "For example, the attendees were shocked to learn that the process of demand history adjustment was so simple but has huge implications regarding forecasting supplies."

Learning about assets and the processes parts go through before arriving to the customers was invaluable, said Air Force Staff Sgt. Keyvontay Huff, the HAZMAT supervisor for the 633rd LRS.
"We learned about things that help not only us but also help DLA," he said. "Learning to do demand adjustments for our base properly is essential to DLA helping us get the correct amount of parts."
Teaching their Air Force customers about demand history adjustments was a positive aspect of the sync, said McDaniel.

"Demand History adjustments are important because we make future ordering decisions based on past demand history," she said. "It allows our customers to communicate instances when there was a demand for an item that is filled outside of the normal supply chain, in turn, enabling DLA to make informed decisions about how we adjust our actions to have the right parts, in the right quantity, at the right time to meet customer needs."

The sync allowed the Airmen to gain additional insight into the career broadener program, something Huff said he was particularly interested in.

"I've always admired the [career broadener] program as a young Airman," he said. "When I joined the Air Force in June 2018, I already knew I wanted to be a career broadener. This sync gave me insight into what they do on a day-to-day basis and knowledge of the wholesale logistics experience.

"Several other Airmen and noncommissioned officers who attended were also interested in that insight," Huff continued. "Since we have to wait until pinning technical sergeant with under 13 years of service and no guarantee of acceptance, this gave us a clear understanding of the process."

McDaniel said the event was a significant first step in improving and increasing customer communication.

"Education about what DLA does and how DLA can help logistics Airman through increasing service readiness and combatant command lethality should be the aim of every Airman who calls DLA home," she said. "Events like these benefit the participants, and I think it's a great source of pride when new connections are made that increase collaboration and lead to solutions."

The DLA team plans to have more syncs to promote education and outreach to all Air Force supply chain operations squadrons and operational logistics readiness squadrons.

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