Original Date: 02/28/2000
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

Crane Army Ammunition Activity’s Production Operations established a central location for recurring supplies, and gave credit card authority to one individual within the organization who consolidated and purchased the recurring small dollar value items. A locally developed purchasing automated data file was initiated and maintained to facilitate the purchasing process.

Purchasing support to Crane Army Ammunition Activity’s (CAAA’s) Production Operations involves numerous small, and at times, repetitive orders from every department. The purchase of many low-value items (e.g., gloves, coveralls, expendables) by sending individual purchase requests to a buyer was time consuming and costly. Processing numerous small orders instead of larger combined orders required significant clerical support and was inefficient from both the buyer’s and the seller’s perspectives. CAAA’s Production Operations recognized that using CAAA’s credit card program would be a beneficial change.

Production Operations established a central location for recurring supplies, and gave credit card authority to one individual within the organization who consolidated and purchased the recurring small dollar value items. Purchases were limited to $2,500 per transaction and $25,000 cumulative per month. A locally developed purchasing automated data file, which maintained compatibility with other similar CAAA data systems, was initiated and maintained to facilitate the purchasing process.

Centralized use of the credit card authority within Production Operations enabled a small stock of recurring items to be maintained, allowed consolidation of supply purchases for all departments, and also improved standardization of supplies. As a result, significantly fewer resources were needed for the clerical and administrative work involved with processing purchase requests.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.