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News | Aug. 2, 2016

Oklahoma City’s Fagan receives Global Distribution Excellence: Special Services Supervisory/Lead Civilian of the Year award

By Missy Wright DLA Distribution Public Affairs

Tommy Fagan, materials examiner and identifier supervisor at Defense Logistics Agency Distribution Oklahoma City, Okla., has been awarded the Global Distribution Excellence: Special Services Supervisory/Lead Civilian of the Year award for his outstanding work ethic.

“Fagan absolutely excelled in every facet and phase of his duties in the operation,” said director Ned LaViolette.  Fagan regularly manages approximately 42,850 square foot of hazardous material, a cold storage warehouse comprised of 11 storerooms, over 102,000 assets valued over $5 million, and six employees serving over 50 critical Air Force customer accounts.

Fagan developed continuity performance standards that allowed for 100 percent flawless cross training of employees.  He established and implemented a robust quality program that reduced quality error rates up to 90 percent.  Also, he directly contributed to the annual DLA Distribution Oklahoma City’s average denial rate of .39 percent, or 13 percent lower than DLA standard of .45 percent.  “Fagan exceled in improving a storage consolidation technique yielding space savings of over 3,000 square feet,” said LaViolette.

His knowledge of prioritization and optimization resulted in a warehouse restructure that yielded increased velocity, faster material turn rates, less order fill times, and reduced travel time. The attention to detail was instrumental in placing the fast moving items in the front and closest to the door, while increasing the warehouse efficiency by 20 percent for a cost avoidance of approximately 2,080 annual labor hours.

Fagan implemented a system to resolve over 200 lines of expired shelf-life, frustrated material and other items needed by the customer, as well as the processing of 158 disposal items and 45 oxygen bottles.  This system reduced reconciliation of the material from three months to less than one day and, in many cases, within the hour.

According to LaViolette, Fagan is a valuable subject matter expert for providing data to headquarters, and testing possible solutions.  He is currently working with DLA Aviation to secure labels thru the HAZMAT Information Resource System while providing a way forward for the other 20-plus distribution sites.  Fagan also called approximately 20 vendors to secure labels as he tested the proposed Avery label maker software.

Hand-picked to serve as the acting branch chief, he was a successful leader with 175 employees, and 14 supervisors to pick and deliver over 2,000 issues and stowing 1,000 tickets per day.  He provided a 100 percent pass rate for plan-to-stock audit readiness test-of-effectiveness evaluations in his work function. 

His hard work has not gone unrecognized.  Fagan was selected as DLA Distribution Oklahoma City Employee for the Third Quarter for fiscal year 2015.  Also, Fagan was nominated by DLA Distribution for the coveted 2015 DLA Leader of the Year Award.

“Mr. Fagan has earned the respect of his customers, team mates, subordinates, DLA Aviation and the DLA staff through exceptional performance, an outstanding work ethic, team work and dedicated customer service,” said LaViolette.