PHILADELPHIA –
For the past 25 years, the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support Medical supply chain’s Electronic Catalog system has been providing customers with a user-friendly capability to order approximately 1.3 million medical items.
The supply chain recognized this milestone with a celebratory brunch in Philadelphia on Oct. 4.
Over the years, ECAT has come a long way and it is a team effort, said Army Col. Bruce Argueta, Medical supply chain director.
“Everyone plays a part in ECAT here,” Argueta said. “Everyone touches the program. There isn’t one single point of failure.”
Modified initially by a West Virginia contractor in 1998, ECAT is a web-based ordering system where customers can order items from various medical product lines with just the internet, a computer and DLA authorization.
ECAT product lines include the niche medical markets of dental, optical, laboratory, medical/surgical items, small medical equipment, hospital equipment and surgical implants. Any federally funded organization can utilize the ECAT system. Current customers include the Department of Defense, Veterans Administration, Health and Human Services, the Indian Health Service, Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State.
According to the DLA public site, ECAT was developed to streamline business practices and expand the range of the supply chain’s procurement options. The system also enables DLA to leverage demand across the entire federal government and combine its buying power to obtain lower prices.
The off-site systems development of ECAT was effective in its initial development, but in 2000 DLA had the foresight to bring the development internal and hired the contractors to work on-site to continue development. This internal development approach provided the supply chain with added agility and the ability to collect metrics, said Linda Stipa, the Medical program support manager.
At its inception, the goal was for the program to generate 250 million dollars in sales to support the warfighter, said Dan Keefe, Director of Medical Supplier Operations.
At the end of fiscal 2022, the ECAT program generated 1.2 billion dollars and the expectation is to be at or near the same once fiscal 2023 final sales are calculated.
None of this could have been achieved without the assistance of the entire Medical supply chain, Stipa said.
“I look around the room and I know this program touches everyone across the directorate,” she said. “I just want to say thank you. I could not ask for a better team, a better program, a better supply chain to be working for. I hope to be here to celebrate the 30th milestone.”