DVIDS – News – ORSA officer helps ASC improve efficiency in global logistics

ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. — There’s an officer at U.S. Army Sustainment Command headquarters whose great-grandfather served as an Army chaplain and who possesses his helmet with Red Cross arm band, trench watch, and knife/fork set that was manufactured here during the World War I era in his cubicle.

Maj. Michael Smith, who chose to serve the Army like his great-grandfather did, is helping the Army the best way he knows how – using data to improve global logistics.

Smith serves as a direct link between ASC’s Support Operations Directorate and its Special Activities Group comprised of ORSAs.

ORSAs apply analytic methods to business practices to improve processes and decision-making using data, which contributes to ASC getting Army equipment, supplies, etc., to where they need to be in a timely manner.

ASC’s SPO provides logistics support for installations, manages Army Prepositioned Stocks, and tracks and supplies support to the force through its seven worldwide Army Field Support Brigades.

Smith is a 2011 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and arrived here in August 2023.

“I chose systems engineering because it is a mix of all traditional engineering disciplines, and I had a knack for statistics,” Smith said.

Today, Smith leads projects for the SPO’s Supply Chain Operations Directorate. “In addition, I can serve as a data translator that can bridge the gap between the other data experts in the ORSA directorate and stakeholders in SPO,” Smith explained.

“ORSAs analyze complex problems to assist with decision-making,” Smith said. “They have a background in operations research, systems analysis, data analytics, and data science. At ASC, data science is one of our core competencies.”

Data science expands on statistics to encompass the entire life cycle of data, from its specification, gathering, and cleaning through its management and analysis; it is used in making decisions and setting policy.

Operations research applies quantitative methods to decision-making. “We assist sponsors within ASC to develop dashboards and perform analysis that can assist their decision-making process,” Smith said. “For example, our team has improved the command’s status of funds visibility for transportation spending.”

Systems analysis is the process of studying a procedure or business to identify its goal and purposes and create systems and procedures that will efficiently achieve them, Smith said.

“For the status of funds visibility process, it has freed hundreds of man-hours that would have been spent compiling various spreadsheets,” Smith explained.

“With the Army’s Vantage platform, we have been able to utilize data from various authoritative data sources – systems of record – which enables the command to save time compared to extracting raw data from the platform. In addition, there can be a common data picture because everyone is operating off the same raw data which was pulled at the same time,” he said.

“For example, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ikaika Tautua, a Supply Systems technician, and I have worked closely to quantify workload of the Army’s Supply Support Activities so we can make it easier and faster to understand the business processes executed by SSAs,” Smith pointed out.

This results in monitoring compliance for contractor-run SSAs. Additionally, they can monitor if SSAs are meeting performance metrics listed in Army regulations, he said.

Tautua, who works in the Supply Chain Operations Directorate, SPO, ASC, said he and Smith are trying to understand “the logistics pipeline, both external and internal, to every installation SSA as it pertains to supporting ASC’s lines of effort.”

This, in turn, leads to better business practices advantageous to ASC such as conducting data analysis as it relates to supply readiness and supply availability, prioritizing materiel issuance to tactical unit requirements, and proper forecasting of on-hand materiel readily available in support of critical Army weapon systems, Tautua said.

There is “a shared understanding on the external and internal logistics pipeline through available reporting systems and procedures” resulting in an “increase in material throughput that decreases equipment downtime while increasing installation SSA health and performance,” Tautua said.

This falls exactly in line with ASC’s lines of effort regarding readiness – supply availability, equipment readiness, data analytics and logistical information readiness.

“Maj. Smith, a lot like many ORSAs within the profession, has the ability to think through various aspects of a presented problem and is able to identify the second and third order effects of proposed analyses. He engages with project sponsors to determine their mid and long-range goals, as well as their immediate needs,” said Matthew Peck, supervisory operations research analyst who heads up the SAG.

Smith said he was working on a process streamlining the reverse logistics pipeline for excess repair parts, which should result in savings for ASC and the Army.

“The reverse logistics pipeline is how the Army either returns unserviceable carcasses to depots/vendors for repair or disposes of property. Army leaders have noted that tactical formations have a significant volume of excess repair parts in their formation,” Smith explained.

Smith also said he’s also developed a report to examine if SSAs have met their annual SSA inventory requirement.

“Current Army regulations specify that everything issued must be turned back into Supply Support Activities. We are completing analysis to determine if that policy is optimal. For example, some items might be able to be scrapped by a base recycling center whereas other excess could be collected directly from a unit,” he said.

“Maj. Smith is extremely engaged and passionate about his work and is always open to learning and understanding new analytic tools and techniques,” Peck said