BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
By the numbers, the Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services North-East region had a great year: the team processed 500,061 receipts and reutilized 23,046 lines of material.
But a successful year is more than just numbers.
“We kept our people safe,” said Beth Ford, DLA Disposition Services North-East director. She said working through another year with COVID keeping her employees and their customers safe was a priority.
“We operated straight through the pandemic, the whole year,” Ford said. “We did not have sites close due to COVID, we continued to provide full speed customer support.”
While COVID did not close any sites, a transformation in how North-East will be providing customer support in the future did close sites.
“We received guidance to close 11 field offices by September 2022,” Ford said. “We already have eight of those sites closed this year.”
While it was a big accomplishment to get the sites closed this year, she said it was hard at the same time. Closing sites impacts people.
She said that it became a big focus point for North-East to work with the people impacted and help them find new positions or explore other options including retirement.
At the site in Columbus, Ohio, a DOD policy change had a major impact, Ford said. The site had a warehouse dedicated just to long-term storage. The policy change eliminated that.
“We transformed that big warehouse into additional warehouse space for our Columbus operations for just doing routine disposal,” Ford said. “So they went from one big building to two and from 47 to 67 people that they are authorized to run that operation,” she added. “That will be a very big change in capability, a 43% increase in people and basically doubling the building to do the routine type of disposal we do.”