The story goes like this: Since 2004, the U.S. Government has supplied Afghan Security Forces with all manner of equipment, from uniforms to transport aircraft. But a new inspector general report finds that someone “might have lost track of more than 43 percent of the 474,823 small arms” sent to the fledgling security force overseas. How? A lack of inventory system integration and bad record keeping.
It seems the U.S. uses two separate systems to track weapons transfers between the states and Afghanistan. The two systems are not well-integrated and up until this point, a centralized inventory had not been conducted. According to the Washington Post, “At the Afghan army’s Central Supply Depot, the inspector general found that 551 of 4,388 weapons listed in an inventory record, or “property book,” did not match a physical count of the inventory.” How could this happen? “The inventory provided only the total count for certain weapon types and not individual serial numbers,” said a spokesperson. A “hand-written list” was all that existed for another stockpile.
The missing and miscounted weapons total $626 million dollars in assets[2] that will, if not found, become a $626 million dollar loss for the U.S. Government. All this because an organization did not have its inventory process in order.
The lesson—and question—in all of this is: What are you not keeping up with that could cost your company serious dollars down the road?
There are a few things a business can do to avoid a costly situation like this:
[1]http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/07/28/afghanistan-may-have-lost-track-of-more-than-200000-weapons/
[2] http://www.inquisitr.com/1378783/pentagon-lost-track-of-626-million-of-weapons-in-afghanistan/