USAUS New Systems Make Military Moves More Efficient

WASHINGTON, June 15, 2010 — With the busiest sea­son for per­ma­nent-change-of-sta­tion moves under way, offi­cials at U.S. Trans­porta­tion Com­mand are encour­ag­ing ser­vice­mem­bers to take advan­tage of new sys­tems designed to make the process more con­ve­nient and effi­cient.

Transcom launched the new Per­son­al­ly Pro­cured Move, or PPM, sys­tem to bet­ter com­pen­sate ser­vice­mem­bers who per­son­al­ly move their house­hold goods on mil­i­tary orders, said Dol­ly David­son, a change man­age­ment out­reach spe­cial­ist at Transcom. PPM replaced the old “Do It Your­self,” or DITY, move system. 

Under PPM, ser­vice­mem­bers can receive up to 95 per­cent of what it would cost the gov­ern­ment to move their goods using a com­mer­cial car­ri­er. They can hire a com­mer­cial mover if they choose, move some or all of their goods them­selves, and pock­et any sav­ings they receive. 

While con­vert­ing to PPM, Transcom also intro­duced a new sys­tem, the Defense Per­son­al Prop­er­ty Sys­tem, to process and man­age house­hold moves. 

DPS is a com­put­er­ized man­age­ment sys­tem for mov­ing the house­hold goods of mil­i­tary mem­bers and Defense Depart­ment civil­ians, David­son explained. It auto­mates many steps involved in mil­i­tary moves: pre-move coun­sel­ing, sched­ul­ing, track­ing, invoic­ing and claims-fil­ing for house­hold goods shipments. 

This elim­i­nates the need for ser­vice­mem­bers to sched­ule appoint­ments at their base to arrange their house­hold goods moves face-to-face, she said, allow­ing them to make arrange­ments any­where, any time. 

“In DTS, you can go in 24/7, you can coun­sel your­self, you can put in your ship­ment and move arrange­ments, and every­thing else is done auto­mat­i­cal­ly,” she said. “You can do it from your lap­top, from your work sta­tion, even your liv­ing room couch. And you can also track your ship­ments online, too.” 

And unlike the lega­cy paper-based sys­tem it replaces, DPS is equipped to process moves ser­vice­mem­bers make them­selves – which con­sti­tute the vast major­i­ty of moves. 

Aside from con­ve­nience, DPS is a big mon­ey-saver for the gov­ern­ment, not only reduc­ing PCS pro­cess­ing costs, but also gen­er­at­ing low­er cost esti­mates from many mov­ing com­pa­nies, said Roland Amos, chief of the DPS func­tion­al and require­ments branch at Transcom. 

That’s a big fac­tor for the mil­i­tary, which spends about $2 bil­lion a year for more than 550,000 house­hold moves, Transcom reported. 

With all these fac­tors in DPS’ favor, Transcom offi­cials are encour­aged by the dra­mat­ic increase in its use since the Per­son­al­ly Pro­cured Move rollout. 

“The ser­vices and the ser­vice­mem­bers have def­i­nite­ly embraced it,” David­son said. “[Usage] went up to about 50 per­cent right from the get-go.” 

Now, David­son added, with the lega­cy sys­tem expect­ed to remain oper­a­tional until Decem­ber along with DPS, her mis­sion is to encour­age ser­vice­mem­bers to choose DPS to process their moves. With more than half of annu­al moves occur­ring between May and August, David­son is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in get­ting that word out now. 

“We real­ly want them to under­stand the advan­tages, and why it’s best for them,” she said. 

Transcom offi­cials also encour­age ser­vice­mem­bers to reg­is­ter their house­hold-move expe­ri­ences through a new online cus­tomer ser­vice sur­vey found at http://www.move.mil. The results will be used to help the com­mand select the best-per­form­ing mov­ing com­pa­nies for future mil­i­tary moves, David­son said. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →