Equipment Management Support
A Government Agency published a requirement to contract with a commercial enterprise to provide Equipment Management Support (EMS) for one of their Program's assets. This Agency's Program acquires quantities of specialized manufactured goods from various sources to support their global mission.
The requirements for the EMS contractor included:
- Receiving of the Agency's Assets from the Various Manufacturers and Supplier Sources
- Inspection of Incoming Shipments of Assets
- Documentation, Identification and Verification of Assets
- Secure Storage of Assets
- Packaging, Crating, Staging & Consolidating of Assets for Deployment as Specified in Shipment Requests
- Arranging for Global Shipment of Assets
- Occasional Modification of Assets as Directed by Agency
- Supporting Manufacturers Technicians during Upgrades of Assets prior to Deployment
- Overall Management of Asset Inventory Until time of Shipment
Questions
A. What type of skills will it take to support the list of the Agency's Program requirements?
B. What would be your suggestions for ensuring Secure Storage of Assets?
C. What are some of the challenges of Global Shipping?
D. What type of inventory system would be beneficial to the performance of EMS?
Possible Solutions
A. EMS contractors best suited to this type of asset management should possess a broad range of logistics experience such as:
- Familiarity with Federal government regulations as well as Agency specific regulations.
- Professional staff that is well trained and background checked to ensure reliability.
- Thorough knowledge of shipping strategies and an understanding of documentation requirements for global shipping.
- Organized asset management system that provides real time visibility of customer's equipment.
B. EMS contractor should be able to provide a well maintained, well lit, fenced, and monitored facility with controlled access by only authorized persons.
C. Global shipping requires a familiarity with tariffs, duty requirements, agricultural considerations, export regulations and customs clearance rules as well as a network of shipper options and broker relationships.
D. The preferred method of inventory management would be a digital solution that incorporates unique identification capability of each item to be inventoried. Barcoding is the optimal solution for marking each asset to be inventoried and tracked from arrival to departure from the custody of the EMS contractor.
