Chapter 20: Stock Control
A clear language of supply and a workable system of parts numbering were essential to the preparation of accurate stock reports by field installations. But to achieve full usefulness such reports had further to be speedily consolidated into one report that would provide figures for procurement and distribution officials to act upon. Detailed knowledge of the quantities of stocks on hand—and their exact location—was the key to orderly supply operations. It was to provide such knowledge as a means of controlling the distribution of supplies that the system known as stock control came into use. After the war the final report of Army Service Forces stated that the development and adoption of an Army-wide stock control system was “the most important single wartime improvement in distribution operations within the Zone of the Interior.”1
Departures From the Ordnance Provision System
The Ordnance Provision System, based on the experience of World War I, was potentially an effective method of keeping records on stocks. Unfortunately, in the period between wars the money allotted for stock control purposes was infinitesimal, in proportion to the immense dollar value of Ordnance stores.2 Between 1920 and 1940 the office staff in Washington, organized in sections or groups, dwindled. For example, Group C, light artillery, and Group G, tank and combat vehicles, which each had fifteen persons in 1918, were reduced to two each.3
In the spring of 1940 the staff had to be expanded. But the new employees who were brought in were entirely unfamiliar with the organization of the Army, with War Department procedures, and with Ordnance matériel. No systematic training program existed to prepare them for their jobs. The group chiefs, all of whom had been with Ordnance since World War I, were reluctant to entrust responsibility to inexperienced clerks. Furthermore, there were never enough new employees to set up and maintain the greatly increased records on issues, particularly the quantities of equipment transferred to foreign governments. At the time of the Dunkerque evacuation, when the United States shipped large quantities of armament to Great Britain, it was all but impossible, because of the great urgency of the need, to maintain accurate records by
model and quantity of each weapon involved.4
The confusion that resulted caused some Ordnance stock controllers to wonder whether the Ordnance Provision System, which theoretically provided a cadre of trained persons on which to build a wartime staff, was indeed capable of expansion to meet wartime needs. Colonel Meyns, who became chief of the General Supply Branch in July of 1941, concluded that, “Whereas this type of organization was very valuable in that it concentrated the production knowledge at one point and had been used to advantage for over 25 years, it was not flexible enough to provide for the rapid expansion required by the velocity of war activities.5 But other supply experts pointed out that sufficient time had not been allowed to prepare and organize special training courses for inexperienced employees.6
More attention in the 1930s to planning for the enlargement of stock control operations in the event of war might have made possible orderly and efficient operation when the emergency came. The question remained theoretical. Although the Ordnance Provision System Regulations were not rescinded, remaining in effect throughout World War II, Ordnance supply experts whose memories went back to World War I observed that the regulations were not followed in their essentials.7 One departure was the establishment of a set of records for distribution only, whereas the Ordnance Provision System used one set of records for both procurement and distribution. Another was the separation of spare parts from their major items.
Both actions were taken in the emergency period before Pearl Harbor. The effects of these innovations, the problems they created, and the solutions to the problems, became increasingly important in the early years of the war. By December 1942 the situation had become critical. The bottleneck at Detroit caused by the concentration there of stock control for all spare parts had delayed the posting of the Consolidated Stores Report figures until they were out of date; the immense recoding operation cast doubt on the accuracy of the data.
Decentralization of Stock Control
A simple answer was decentralization, and some planning along this line was in progress in the spring of 1943.8 Colonel Sadtler, Assistant to the Chief of Ordnance for Parts, suggested that Field Service, organized at the operating level on a functional basis, be decentralized on a product basis, as had been successfully accomplished by the Technical and Industrial Divisions. Colonel Sadtler’s plan called for bringing major items and their spares and tools back together, as in the old Ordnance Provision System, and for concentrating upon each product the best technical skill available by locating in one place all Ordnance activities connected with each type of product. Colonel Sadtler argued that this plan would lift the burden of operations from top-level Field Service agencies and enable them to perform better the important job of planning and supervision.9
The complete product center concept was not followed, but the Chief of Ordnance did decide to set up Field Service suboffices that would administer stock control, supervise storage, and direct maintenance operations for certain types of matériel. The first was at Frankford Arsenal. On 23 August 1943 Frankford received responsibility for fire control and antiaircraft matériel distribution operations formerly performed at T-AC, and on 31 December was assigned stock control functions for certain major items of this kind. The second suboffice was established at Rock Island on 15 January 1944 for mobile artillery and small arms, exclusive of major items. By that time stock control had been further decentralized along several lines. In addition to Frankford and Rock Island, three stock control points for items of general supply had been designated. For automotive items and end parts, districts and arsenals sent their stores reports to Detroit, for tools and tool equipment of tank-automotive items to the St. Louis Ordnance Depot, and for cleaning and preserving materials and major items of small arms and artillery to the Office, Chief of Ordnance in Washington. Effective 24 January 1944, reports on the status of ammunition stocks went to the Ammunition Supply Office in Philadelphia.10
The job of reporting approximately three hundred fifty thousand items of general supply each month from forty different locations was large and involved. No stock control system could automatically solve all problems, but there is evidence that decentralization brought about improvement almost at once. After only ninety days of operation, the Rock Island sub-office, for example, had cut the time for consolidating stores reports to a little more than two weeks, as compared with ap- proximately six weeks formerly required by the Stock Control Branch in Detroit. This was accomplished mainly by promoting familiarity with the item. Rock Island broke down the organization into small groups handling no more than two thousand items and provided records that gave the complete distribution and replenishment history of each item. Another effective technique, followed also at the Frank-ford suboffice, was to clear the records of all duplicate and dead numbers. In this way Rock Island reduced the thirty-nine thousand items formerly handled at Detroit to 17,600. Frankford reduced its items from fifty thousand to twenty-five thousand and by July 1944 had achieved better than 90 percent availability on all fire control and antiaircraft matériel.11
By the fall of 1944 General Campbell felt that the results completely justified his decision to decentralize Field Service operations, and he planned to continue the process as fast as it could be done without disrupting supply at that critical period. After V—E Day, for example, he would transfer to Rock Island stock control operations for major items of small arms and mobile artillery as well as parts. In the meantime he thought that some of the
hazards of dividing stock control responsibilities between Washington and the field could be avoided by a realignment of the Stock Control Division in Washington to place emphasis on supervision rather than operations and by an Ordnance Department Order clarifying the responsibilities of the various divisions.12
Ordnance supply experts believed that the establishment of the Frankford and Rock Island suboffices went a long way toward solving distribution problems as far as “shooting Ordnance” was concerned.13 This belief was substantiated by General Somervell’s statement in February 1945 concerning his conversations with members of the War Department General Staff: “The only thing I have not heard any complaints about was spare parts for weapons.”14
Special Problems of Automotive Parts Supply
Automotive parts were another matter. Ordnance troubles “smelled of gasoline.”15 The size of the problem faced by the vehicle supply operation in Detroit is indicated by the fact that vehicles, including spare parts, tools, and equipment, accounted for $19 billion out of a total of $26 billion worth of Ordnance major model types procured and scheduled between 1942 and 1945, as compared with $3 billion for small arms and $4 billion for artillery and fire control items.16 At the end of December 1943 Ordnance was paying more than $too million a month for automotive parts alone. In the light of these figures it seemed to the Chief of Ordnance “inconceivable for anyone to say there are no spare parts.”17
But theater commanders were saying so, and were saving it as emphatically as they could, especially those planning the invasion of Europe. Maj. Gen. Everett S. Hughes, a former chief of the Equipment Division, Field Service, who was now deputy commander of the North African theater, considered that the Ordnance Department had underestimated the requirements for parts, basing estimates too much on the peacetime experience both of the automobile industry and military planners. Yet he also recognized distribution factors that could not have been foreseen.18
The Stock Control Branch at Detroit, which had just been given responsibility for spare parts replenishment, worked with the Industrial Service to improve production.19 As for distribution, some of the volume of paper work at Detroit was relieved by the establishment of the tools and equipment suboffice at St. Louis. At the same time the Chief of Ordnance, who was spending “a tremendous amount of time ... in spare parts and Field Service matters,”20 considered using master depots as stock control points for tank-automotive supplies. Automotive parts
planners intended that master depots would eventually be completely responsible for their own items, including keeping the stock control record.21 But the new Parts Numbering and Interchangeability Program, creating the necessity for several installations to stock the same parts, made it inadvisable after 1944 further to decentralize stock control functions to master depots.22
Safford Committee Findings
Investigations in the spring of 1945 by the Safford Committee probed deeply into the fundamentals of automotive spare parts supply. One thing the members of the committee agreed upon—the problem of effective control of stocks was staggering and had no easy solution. In the words of Colonel Clifford of OCO Detroit, “There are so many points of view on it and any time a decision is made it means so many thousands of tons of iron moving around that it makes you shiver.”23 Some Field Service officials felt that the Industrial Service had placed too much emphasis on the assignment of Official Stock Numbers and not enough on their use. There was also disagreement on the subject of the master depot plan for automotive supply. General MacMorland of Field Service believed that the master depot plan by car-line had not been outstandingly successful. Members of the committee from Industrial Service pointed out that the close relationship between the master depots and manufacturers had helped on questions of identification and in other ways, and that the committee could not wait to achieve the ideal system but had to take action to improve parts supply quickly without disrupting operations.24 In planning for the postwar period the committee leaned toward a scheme to recode the Official Stock Numbers by manufacturer’s codes.25
The By-Item Supply Plan
There was a growing sentiment in the field, however, for a return to the by-item supply plan of the Ordnance Provision System, which specifically provided a “home” for each item in its catalog. Citing the case of a former Ford man in Cherbourg who had opposed the Ordnance Provision System for a long time but had finally become converted, Col. Waldo E. Laidlaw of the New York Port of Embarkation testified during the committee investigations that, “I have never talked to anyone from the highest echelon that I deal with to the lowest that doesn’t state that the system we used in 1925 was the best one that was devised.”26 Long experience in Ordnance supply during World War II, especially automotive supply, convinced Gamrath that the Ordnance
Provision System was “a sound method of operation.”27
The Influence of ASF
Beginning in January 1943, the month in which, according to an Army Service Forces official, “stock control was conceived,”28 ASF held a series of conferences on the subject, called for reports from the chiefs of the technical services, and began the preparation of a manual for posts, camps, and stations. Appearing in tentative form in March, the manual was also a directive. It placed stock control procedure, under the general policies of ASF, in the hands of the chiefs of technical services. Each of these chiefs was to organize a stock control agency, set stock levels at depots and stations, establish inventory procedures, and supervise the distribution and redistribution of stocks to maintain an efficient balance between supply and demand. An important result, not specifically set forth in the manual, was the placing of full responsibility for handling requisitions on the depot commanders; the new system put a stop to the earlier practice of referring requisitions to the Service Commands for processing.29
The Ordnance Department was reluctant to establish a stock control agency because this move increased the functionalism in Field Service organization that had already caused trouble. General Campbell and General Hatcher both favored assigning supply responsibility on a product basis. But efforts at compromise with ASF were fruitless, and a Stock Control Branch was established in August 1943.30 In the meantime the Field Service Division took action to extend Ordnance stock control, which had hitherto mainly operated by means of the Ordnance Provision System between factory and depot, more effectively to the level below the depots—posts, camps and stations.
Some benefits of the new program were apparent immediately; for example, during the month of June the Normoyle Ordnance Depot recovered 1,155,370 pounds of excess stocks;31 but all problems were not immediately solved. In spite of frequent inspections at stations by stock control teams sent by Ordnance, the Service Commands, and ASF, there continued to be hoarding, on the one hand, and, on the other, shipments to depots of stocks that were not true surpluses and might be requisitioned by the same post a few days later. Excesses sometimes arrived improperly packaged and unidentifiable.32 On the credit side, more than 110,000,000 pounds of critically needed parts, supplies, tools, tires, and tubes were returned to supply channels from posts, camps, and stations during fiscal year 1944 as compared with 30,000,000 for the year preceding.33
By early 1944 large surpluses of usable parts were accumulating in stations and key supply points as troops began to move
out of the United States for the invasion of Europe. Recapturing this excess material was in the opinion of one stock control officer Field Service’s “No. 2 job”34—second only to getting supplies overseas. Once the parts came into the stock control system of the depots they could be used to fill overseas lines or to recondition vehicles for shipment to Europe.
Stock Levels
The setting of proper stock levels was a matter of greatest importance, for determination of the amount of a particular item to be kept on hand was the keystone of all supply operations. In July 1943 ASF instructed the technical services to establish levels according to a formula that provided for a Maximum Distribution Level (MDL) consisting of minimum stock, working stock, and provisions for replenishment. In addition there could be several types of reserves. It was expected that levels would vary; no rigid figures were given, only examples.35 In February 1944 the War Department authorized an over-all allowance of a 105-day supply on hand in the United States. Of this, except in a few special cases, supply for 45 days was to be carried in depots, 45 days in stations, and 15 days in transit between depots and stations. This meant, in effect, that depots might maintain a 60-day supply of items for issue to posts and overseas, plus the various reserves then authorized—strategic, contingency, utility, and production. When the computation of these levels and reserves proved too great a task, ASF sought and obtained a revision in May 1944 that provided for a 90-day supply plus a strategic reserve.36
Nothing was clearer than that levels of stock at the various stages in the supply system had to be determined, yet it became equally clear as time went on that the correct computation of these levels depended greatly on the good judgment of individual supply officers. In Ordnance, as in other technical services, there was a tendency to base the formula unduly on past experience rather than on intelligent projection into the future.37 It became necessary for ASF in a 1944 revision of TM 38-220 to state specifically that past dcmands of a nonrepetitive nature not anticipated in the future were not a proper base for an increase in station levels. Nor was simple projection into the future enough. Careless or uneducated guesswork could hinder the process of orderly supply. Late in 1944, for example, the Chief of Ordnance found that the repair of automotive vehicles was handicapped because station supply officers and depot representatives had underestimated future requirements and moved too much matériel out of stations.
ASF Supply Control Program, 1944
The phasing of requirements by months for the immediate future and by quarters for the years ahead was one of the most
important characteristics of the ASF Supply Control System announced in March
1944. By then the supply task was to maintain an 8-million-man Army that had already been equipped, and the job had to be done without unnecessarily increasing production. Careful adjustment of supply to demand required that all factors for each principal item be assembled on one sheet of paper—past issues, stock levels, reserves, and so on. After studying these data, ASF officials projected the future
demand, by intervals of time. Against this were balanced deliveries from production, the amount of stocks on hand, and anticipated returns to stock. Reliable data were the essence of the whole operation. As a high-ranking ASF officer, Lt. Gen. LeRoy Lutes, stated after the war:
With the inauguration of the Supply Control System, it quickly developed that the process of controlling supply was in the last analysis entirely dependent upon basic records and paper work in depots, procurement district offices, and other installations in the field. The data for the supply control form could only be assembled from these sources.38
To determine whether the data available on stocks provided the information needed for the supply control form, the ASF Control Division in August 1944 made an analysis of the technical services’ depot stock accounting and reporting procedures. The survey revealed that most of the services could meet the requirements of supply control, although some deficiencies were noted in methods. In the case of the Ordnance Department, for example, the investigators counted as a deficiency the fact that stock records were maintained manually on major items, a slow method that might produce errors because of multiple postings of identical data.39 In general, the greatest criticism of the technical serv ice procedures was that they were not uniform. The technical services protested that, to achieve uniformity, they would have to rewrite manuals and retrain personnel; they contended that errors were bound to occur during the change-over and that there would certainly be a large loss in punch cards and report forms. They also argued that the transition would take time and should not be attempted so late in the war. After considering these objections, the surveyors still maintained that the advantages of standardization outweighed the disadvantages.40
ASF then began the process of converting existing procedures in stock reporting into one uniform system, with stock status reports conveying the same information from all the services. This took the greater part of the winter and spring of 1945. Manual 413—Iz putting the program into effect did not appear until August 1945. In the meantime ASF planners, discovering that the quantities of stocks in depots often varied from recorded stock balances, turned their attention to improving inventory procedures. On this project Ordnance worked closely with ASF’s Control Division in the preparation of a manual. The draft of the manual was test-checked in an Ordnance depot; in its final form, issued 15 May 1944, it incorporated Ordnance recommendations.41
The Supply Control program did not radically change Ordnance reporting and inventory procedures; such changes as were made came late in the war. During fiscal year 1945, ASF placed responsibility for control of supplies on the stock control point rather than the depot. But this emphasis on the stock control point as the key to the distribution system, “the most important development in the fiscal year in the stock control field,”42 was not new to Ordnance, which had already established six such organizations before February 1944.
Perhaps the most important effect of the ASF program on Ordnance Field Service operations was the establishment of lower stock levels for spare parts.43 Early in 1944 ASF set depot maximum stock levels at ninety days. After the Normandy landings in June and the successes of the summer of 1944 the maximum level was reduced to sixty days. Manual 416 of November 1944 directed that stockpile quantities above this level would have to be reviewed and approved by the Commanding General of ASF. In late December combat losses in the Battle of the Bulge suddenly increased demands from the theater and threatened to reduce stocks to the danger point. There was not time to seek ASF approval for a cushion of stocks. General Campbell took the problem personally to General Somer-yell and obtained authority to put in a liberal factor for battle losses, a factor to be based on the Ordnance Department’s own best judgment.44 After the crisis was over, stockpiling was discontinued. In
April 1945 ASF set at ninety days the normal stock level for parts and special tools for weapons, for fire control instruments, and for combat vehicles; and at sixty days, that for items needed in the civilian economy, including automotive and standard parts. After V—E Day, the narrowing of the war to the Pacific area focused the attention of Ordnance stock controllers on problems of redistribution and disposal.45
Redistribution and Disposal
Early attention to the disposal of unneeded Ordnance supplies was brought about by the shortage of critical matériel late in 1942 that also started the nationwide scrap-collection program. At that time the Ordnance Department directed depot commanders to scrap all matériel that had been declared obsolete by the Ordnance Committee and much other matériel that was no longer standard issue and was not being manufactured. Matériel that was surplus, carefully considered so in the light of depot requirements, possible future demands, and national needs, was to be moved out of distribution depots.46 Later, the work of clearing obsolete and unauthorized items from stock became a continuing function of stock control points and master depots, and the reporting of excesses, for
redistribution or disposal, an important factor in supply control. Stores reports were adjusted to reflect this information, and they helped to prevent unnecessary procurement.47
In the summer of 1944 floods of excess stocks began to inundate the depots. Fort Wayne Ordnance Depot, for example, which received in April 9,060 items weighing 110,404 pounds from 29 stations, by the following September was receiving 20,652 items weighing 1,240,364 pounds from 94 stations. These were only about 60 percent of the total items reported, as they did not include items extracted to master depots, unauthorized items reported to Detroit, or obsolete items reported to the Treasury Department.48 Between 30 June 1944 and 30 June 1945 Army Service Forces made available for redistribution or disposal some $946 million worth of property; about 60 percent of it was Ordnance matériel.49
Control of excess stocks began with a “station excess stock account” kept in the depots on individual item cards showing nomenclature, unit, item stock number, and SNL group or manufacturer’s code. The depots transmitted this information to stock control points on their stores reports under a special heading, Condition Code No. 4.50 The stock control points, whose records showed the national stock position, then determined whether the item was truly excess. Thereafter, disposal action depended on whether the excess stock consisted of principal, or major items, for convenience called P items, or of secondary items —accessories, parts, supplies, tools and equipment—termed S items. The stock control point reported P items at once to Field Service’s Matériel Control office, which declared them surplus, obtaining prior approval from ASF for items valued at more than $500,000. S items were circularized for thirty days to other Ordnance establishments, other War Department agencies, and the Navy; only those that were unneeded were reported in the Office of Matériel Control. After that office made the surplus declaration on P and S items, it issued disposition instructions to the stock control point concerned, which in turn instructed the depots.51
To set up a reporting system for excess stocks was not difficult, but to be reasonably sure that the figures were accurate was another matter. Errors in the amount and type of excess stocks began when troops departing for overseas turned in their equipment to the stations. Because of lack of time or lack of the technical knowledge required for identification, the turn-in figures were often inaccurate. Sometimes, rather than perform the necessary paper work, troop units abandoned their excess equipment, in one instance dumping it on a neighboring farm and in another throwing it into a lake.52
The problem of item identification appeared again at the stations and even in the depots, which often received items in mixed lots without tags, physical markings, or written records. Station classification as to serviceability was meaningless
when careless packing resulted in damage in transit. Big axle assemblies might be thrown in the same box with delicate gages. One package received at Red River Depot contained a shovel, a hydrometer, and a pressure gage; another was a jumble of instruments and old iron of all kinds.53 To the problem of unidentifiable and damaged stocks the best solution seemed to be closer coordination between the depots and Service Commands. Ogden Arsenal found that sending out small, fast-moving Station Excess Stock Teams composed of a Service Command representative and two civilian experts from the Arsenal was effective.54
The orderly disposal of surplus stocks became increasingly important as the end of World War II came in sight. The board set up under the Surplus Property Act of 3 October 1944 made the Reconstruction Finance Corporation the disposal agency for industrial-type property and the Treasury that for consumer-type items, which represented about go percent of Service Command matériel.55 As stocks began to pile up in Ordnance depots from posts, camps, and stations at a rate averaging twenty-one million pounds per month during Fiscal Year 1945,56 the storage problem became extremely troublesome because the Treasury lacked space and manpower; the problem of locating, identifying, and reporting the individual items in this vast hoard, the first step in moving them out, was also serious. Ordnance’s main disposal official, Col. Fred A. McMahon, stayed in close contact with the ASF Stock Control Division, but found that the great number of hazy and sometimes conflicting regulations from above made the task of reporting excess stocks extremely difficult.57 By the summer of 1945 there were nearly one hundred separate War Department and ASF instructions dealing with the disposition of excess and surplus property.58
After the Ordnance Department complained that the directives were difficult to interpret and apply, the ASF Control Division surveyed the situation and recommended certain improvements in procedure. General Somervell appointed a working group that by the middle of August 1945 succeeded in consolidating the numerous instructions into four basic documents, including two manuals in which terms such as disposition, redistribution, transfer, and excess were carefully defined. Other results of the group’s work were some degree of decentralization of disposal authority to depots and stations, better systems of reporting and circularization, and a general tightening of the ASF organization for property disposition. The fruits of these efforts would come after V-J day.59
Stock Control in Retrospect
More imaginative planning in the period between wars might have averted many of the mistakes in the wartime management of general supplies, especially spare parts. Caught unprepared by the flood of parts coming off the production lines in 1940, the Ordnance Department turned to the business world for advice, and, on the recommendation of an expert from
industry, set up a new organization to control all parts. Sent to Detroit in the fall of 1942 when the Tank-Automotive Center was established there, the new parts unit suffered badly in the move, losing experienced employees and access to technical records that remained in Washington. Moreover, the new unit was burdened with a huge coding operation made necessary by the installation of IBM machines in the summer of 1941.
Electrical accounting machines were doubtless necessary to keep records current; but here again there was not adequate planning. Instead of adapting the IBM cards to military purposes, Ordnance set up a new system of parts identification to suit the machines. The change-over to the new item stock number lagged behind production and was swamped when more than one hundred thousand automotive items came into the Ordnance system in the summer of 1942. For this reason, and because of inability to keep up with the records at Detroit, the stock control machinery was on the verge of a breakdown by December 1942.
After replacing his Chief of Field Service, General Campbell reviewed Field Service operations with a committee of advisers from industry, and took several steps to improve supply. One was the appointment of a board to study parts numbering. Another was the removal from Detroit of stock control responsibility for weapons parts, fire control parts, tools, and other items of equipment, and the establishment of suboffices, or stock control points, for these types of matériel. But there still remained at Detroit the very large operation for tank-automotive items, and from the theaters in the crucial first months of 1944 came complaints of a shortage of vehicle spare parts. To speed up the flow from factory to port, the Chief of Ordnance, again consulting with industrial experts, set up master depots stocking everything needed for a certain make of vehicle such as Dodge. The master depot plan was helpful in some respects but conflicted with the new parts numbering system that had in the meantime been evolved by the Ordnance Numbering Board.
The assignment of a new number for every part, cross referencing to it all the old numbers that the item might have, was one of the major supply efforts of the Ordnance Department. The whole question of item identification in relation to stock control, including accurate and uniform nomenclature of all items, became increasingly important throughout the Army. Early in 1945 the President set in motion a program for preparing a uniform Federal catalog for supplies of all kinds.
The influence of Army Service Forces on the management of stocks was felt mainly at the level below the depots—in posts, camps, and stations, and in the establishment of stock levels. The ASF stock control manual for depots did not appear until August 1945; the ASF item-identification program, for a common language of supply for all technical services, was postponed until after the war. Generally speaking an Army-wide appreciation of the need for effective stock control and the amount of manpower it took to achieve it came too late in the war to be of much value.
Looking back over the experiences of World War II many Ordnance supply experts felt that Ordnance had placed too much reliance on civilians who were familiar only with commercial stock control and did not understand military procedure. Some felt a better solution to the
problem caused by Army inexperience in stock control would be the assignment of Army officers to commercial concerns for training in peacetime.60 The success of the experiment in decentralization by commodity, the stock control points, lent weight to proponents , of the product center concept, in which procurement, is- sue, storage, maintenance—and stock control—of both major items and spare parts would be located in one place, with one set of records.