Last year, Spartan Motors won its fourth straight Gold Award from the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency, honoring its performance as one of the government’s top suppliers. Spartan designs and manufactures specialty custom chassis for emergency response and defense vehicles (among others), and provides key components for the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle program as well as Iraqi Light Armored Vehicles (ILAVs).
Art Ickes, president of Spartan’s specialty vehicles business unit, spoke to Aftermarket Business World about the company’s work with the DLA.
How did you get involved on working with military vehicles?
We originally got into that with a company called Force Protection in 2004, and they have since been bought out by General Dynamics. They own the intellectual property, but we did most of the running gear work and assembly integration. We’ve stayed in the business in a support role for aftermarket parts, and although we did do a limited turn of 24 units last year.
You’ve been named a top supplier by the DLA several years in a row. What has contributed to that success?
The Gold Award goes to top rated suppliers that perform 99.7 percent or better for on-time delivery. That’s very important, particularly in times of conflict. We also have been very competitive on pricing.
What are the biggest challenges of supplying the military? Is it hard to do any inventory management or forecasting?
We have a retired U.S. Army colonel who works for us on a contract basis, who stays very close to the government. He has enough intel to say if there is a likelihood that something will happen, and we can lean forward on that demand. The timing is not always perfect. We may lean forward and have to wait for the order to come. But we are ready when they need the supplies, and even the government doesn’t always know when something is coming up.
The other thing is that we have the tools, equipment and people ready. Since the government business is low now, they are assigned to other things, but when that order comes in we can pull them from their full-time assignment and do what is necessary to get that work done. They have that experience.
Are there different labeling requirements or packaging requirements for the military, versus your commercial customers?
It’s more precise. If it has a shelf life, then that full shelf life has to be available to the government. They may put it in a depot or a forward base, and it may get used in a week or it may be there 10 years from now.
For packaging there are extra provisions for securing material so it’s not damaged. A lot of the forward bases where this material is sent are located overseas, so it gets sent by military transport. In some case they parachute parts to a location. You need to have heavier packaging than if you were sending that by UPS.
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