Drop in workload threatens future of Army depots

Work at Army repair depots is on the decline and they may not be worth keeping open if new repair jobs are not brought in, according to a new General Accounting Office report.

"Without new work, the depots cannot continue to be viable. While some new work is being explored, little work for new or upgraded systems is going to the depots," GAO concluded in the report (GAO-03-682).

Since 1987, the Army's five depots, which spend about $1.5 billion annually and employ nearly 10,000 civilians repairing weapons systems ranging from tanks to radios, have seen their workloads decline by nearly 40 percent. At the same time, overall Army maintenance work has risen, but contractors and the military's small regional repair centers are performing much of that new work, GAO found.

The type of work done at depots has also changed "significantly," the report said. Increasingly, the depots are repairing secondary items, such as engines and transmissions, rather than primary ones, such as tanks and helicopters. Also, the Army is increasingly doing work for other military services at its depots. For example, at Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, Air Force work accounted for less than five percent of all repair jobs in 1987. Now it accounts for nearly one-fourth.

GAO found the depots have improved efficiency by downsizing facilities, forming partnerships with contractors and adopting industry manufacturing practices. The Army has forged more partnerships-42-with private firms than any other military service. For example, at the Corpus Christi Army Depot in Texas, officials have reduced the time it takes to repair certain engines by 26 percent through a partnership with General Electric.

Nevertheless, the Army has yet to craft a long-term plan for managing the change in the nature of work at the depots. "The Army has taken steps to develop a strategic plan for its depots, but it is not comprehensive or current and the Army has not yet implemented it," the report said. GAO recommended that both the Army and Defense Department develop standards for tracking and projecting work that will come into depots to improve their long-term viability.

The Defense Department concurred with the idea that the Army should improve how it tracks and projects depot work. Also, Defense officials said they would begin studying ways to improve tracking and projection systems for work shared across military depots.