U.S. Army Central Command: Improved Funds Management Regarding Strategic Airlift Bills from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service

U.S. Army Central Command (ARCENT) provides support services to in-theater Army forces as well as directed Army
support to other military services. ARCENT also conducts theater security cooperation activities and provides a forward-
based Army component to plan and conduct land operations across its area of responsibility (AOR--the Middle East).
Further, ARCENT supports force rotations, conducts receptions, staging and onward movements, and provides in-theater
sustainment to forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa.

ARCENT's contingency operations budget includes funds for U.S. Army strategic airlift that is needed for transportation
between the U.S. Central Command AOR and others. Airlift is scheduled using the Joint Operation Planning and
Execution System (JOPES) which is both classified and expensive. JOPES is provided by the U.S. Air Force and billings to
ARCENT are provided retroactively by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS). Since each mission costs on
average $381,000, review and approval is performed at ARCENT prior to payment to DFAS. In 2007, ARCENT found more
than $17 million in miscoded bills.

Approach

A Lean Six Sigma (LSS) team was formed to analyze and correct this situation. The team examined nine months of
bills (1,075 individual missions) from DFAS and concluded that roughly 8% of missions were unable to be identified by
ARCENT. Since the rate of rejected missions at that time was 4.4%, gaining clarity as to the passengers and/or cargo on
the unidentifiable missions could allow ARCENT to challenge another three to four bills per year; thus enabling $1.5 to
$2.0 million in savings to the contingency operating budget. The team found data issues with the current system and
that the system no longer fit the needs of the review process.

Results

The team found that the easiest way to resolve the unidentifiable mission problem was to replace the JOPES scheduling
system with another (unclassified) system known as GEMS. ARCENT's strategic airlift budget officer was provided with
GEMS that identified all passenger, cargo and transportation account codes for all missions. Using GEMs in a pilot test
identified another $700,000 in DFAS billings that should have been challenged. As a result of transitioning to GEMS,
ARCENT expects to realize at least an annual $1.34 million cost reduction. Control charts are now used to keep missions
constantly visible to the budget officer. Further refinements to the process, consistent utilization of data and the GEMS
system will provide close to 25 percent cost reduction.

Better Funds Management
U.S. Army Central Command, which has the Middle East as its area of responsibility, procures airlift support from the U.S.
Air Force and pays for this support via the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Since this support is expensive, the
Command spent considerable time reviewing payment requests for accuracy prior to actually making payments. A LSS
project found that about eight percent of airlift missions could not be identified; thereby compromising payment accuracy.
The project recommended transitioning from an expensive classified scheduling system to an unclassified system that
provided better mission identification data. Doing so saved the Command at least $1.34 million annually.