Posted on 06/26/2002 8:49:04 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Methods borrowed from civilian firms applied to military
By Jennifer A. Bowen, Belleville News-Democrat
For nine years, a civilian has been in charge of the business side of a more than $4 billion military transportation service near Belleville.Trish Young, chief of the business center for U.S. Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base, is the highest-ranked female civilian at Transcom and is in charge of increasing the efficiency of the military’s transportation company. Young holds a civilian rank equivalent to the military rank of a major.
U.S. Transcom is the operation responsible for organizing all of the land, sea and air transportation of all of the cargo, people and supplies needed by the U.S. military.
It organizes the movement of tanks, weapons, parts, troops and even supplies for humanitarian efforts worldwide and get them to some of the hardest-to-reach, dangerous places in the world.
Young is responsible for staying informed of all of the business practices of some of the largest civilian transportation companies in the world and learns from them how to make Transcom more efficient.
She and her co-workers study and analyze methods used by companies such as FedEx, UPS and Caterpillar to better serve their customers, who include the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, FBI and DEA.
From private companies, Transcom learned to use bar codes to more efficiently track cargo and people. When military personnel are issued identification cards, personal information is included on a bar code on the back of the card.
Using the bar codes, Young and her office also can find trouble spots where the system bogs down.
"We look at the timing of the trucks (and) when they pick up cargo and move it so we can synchronize everything," Young said. "We don’t want to miss a flight and have cargo sit there for a day."
Young and logistics analysts in her office spend a lot of time studying routes, analyzing why similar routes have different delivery times and discovering how to make those routes more cost-effective and efficient. Transcom doesn’t move stuff for free. Each customer is required to pay for the move, and like any customer, the military doesn’t want to have to pay too much to get its stuff where it needs to be.
Although Young looks to civilian corporations and their business practices, much of the cargo Transcom moves is unique.
"I think a tank is our most unique cargo." Young said. "We have to figure out how we move that tank most efficiently. It’s a very complex business."
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the amount of cargo and people moved by Transcom went up about 30 percent.
"During the first few months of Operation Enduring Freedom, we moved almost a million pounds of wheat and hundreds of thousands of blankets," Young said.
Young has been in the transportation business for 17 years, and she never thought she’d end up in her line of work. She graduated with a dual degree in communications and business, and always figured she’d end up working in public relations for a large firm.
"Well, I guess I’m still kind of in that role," she said. "Every day is different. I know when I get up in the morning there is going to be a new challenge for us. It’s so neat to know when you watch CNN and see troops lifted or people evacuated that you were part of that. It’s such a neat feeling, knowing you are behind the scenes supporting them to get the job done. That’s job satisfaction."
AIEEEEE- MARK OF THE BEAST!!!
(wanted to be the first...)
"And the Bizan shall be huge, and black, and the eyes thereof RED with the blood of living creatures! And the whore of Babylon shall ride forth on a grey headed serpant, and throughout the lands there shall be a great rubbing of parts. Yeah."
"And the demon shall bear a nine bladed sword. Nine bladed! Not two, or five, or seven but NINE! Which he shall wield on all wretched sinners, sinners just like you, sir there. And the horns shall be on the head..."
"There shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment. At that time, a friend shall lose his friends hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before..." before, about eight O'clock.
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