NEW CUMBERLAND, Pennsylvania –
Honoring her more than 30 years of service, friends, family, and coworkers gathered to celebrate the retirement of DLA Distribution’s Future Operation Material Accountability chief, Denise Kurtz, on March 24. Kurtz received the DLA Meritorious Civilian Service award for her contributions to the organization.
Kurtz began her career as a GS-3 at the former Defense Depot Mechanicsburg, Pa. She worked a variety of positions in the Comptroller’s Office, until the merger between DDMP and New Cumberland Army Depot in 1991.
She worked on the funding teams to bring DLA facilities to standard following DMRD 902, and helped stand up both Letterkenny Army Depot and DLA Distribution Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Kurtz was selected as the Inventory team lead in 2001, and has been an integral part of the program ever since. She led the team in the Inventory improvement effort titled SWARM from 2003 through 2006. This was a massive $28 million effort to improve DLA’s inventory accuracy through physical inventories, identification and correction of root cause process problems, addition of manual and systemic controls, and the development of the first distribution process training program. This effort was recognized by DLA and the Services and laid the foundation for being able to meet the aggressive timeline for the recent Audit Readiness assertion in Plan to Stock. The DLA Inventory Team, to include the accountable officers at each distribution center, won the DLA Team of the Year award in December 2006 in recognition of the SWARM effort.
Kurtz became the supervisory supply management specialist over the Operations Procedures Branch in 2004. Through several reorganizations, her responsibilities covered policy, process and procedure oversight for all areas within Distribution. She served as the supervisor and sub-process owner for Inventory, Stock Readiness, Packaging, Hazardous Material, Special Commodities, and Kitting. She has been the DLA Distribution Accountable Officer since 2009, which currently includes 2.4 million National Stock Numbers at a value of $108 billion.
She culminated her career as the interim DLA Distribution director of Policy and Processes after the retirement of her former director.
Denise Kurtz shared her retirement ceremony with her husband, John, the former DLA Distribution comptroller. The two plan to travel and spend as much time as possible with their grandchildren for the future.