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ANAAC soldiers organize warehouse

  • Published
  • By U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class (MC1) Elizabeth Burke
  • NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan --  The Afghan National Army Air Corps recently tackled the daunting task of organizing their 5,400 square foot general purpose warehouse, which has a storage capacity of 15,600 square feet. They were given two weeks to complete the task with an additional 10 personnel and the help of their mentor, Tech. Sgt. Sean Smith, from the 439th Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron Mission Support Group, of the 438th Air Expeditionary Wing, Combined Air Power Transition Force.

They completed the project a week ahead of schedule.

"We are really happy and feeling really good. Now you can see everything is on the shelves and perfect," said ANAAC Sergeant Major Sherullah Safi, NCOIC of Supply.

The warehouse is actually an Afghan National Army GP warehouse, but is manned by Air Corps personnel. The fulltime staff consists of a division officer, the NCOIC and two soldiers. The facility stocks everything from office furniture to clothing items. Their biggest priority is clothing items, which take up most of their space.

The two soldiers are the primary workers. There is no material-handling equipment except for one pallet jack and a couple of dollies. MHE has been on order since 2009.

The majority of their things come in very large packages and it takes four people to lift one of the boxes.

The only written guidance they have is a 300-page decree detailing authorization procedures. The first step in organizing the warehouse was co-locating similar items. Next was attaching property tags, identifying the items. Then, assigning bin locations, so soldiers know where things are when their customers request them. Once those steps were completed, they could then do an inventory.

Currently, there is no standard operating procedure for running the warehouse and that is what Sergeant Smith is trying to teach them. In the last year the warehouse has made great strides. He asks for a lot from his mentees, but he gets results.

"Now it is time to take leaps and bounds," Sergeant Smith said.

15 months ago, the warehouse was in a different location and they only had shipping containers to store supplies. Things were missing and disorganized. Since the warehouse is in its new location, the majority of supplies are located in one building. The exception is old furniture, which is kept for units that need furniture but don't have the resources. Unserviceable items, like old metal, are taken to a recycling center and sold for scrap.

"I really want to say thanks to Sergeant Sean Smith. He really helped us and he made this process easy for us. I really appreciate his work here and I won't forget it," said Safi.

The current inventory tracking system is on paper. It is time consuming and unreliable. The next step is an automated system that Sergeant Smith hopes to have operating within a year.