Clothing and Textiles expedites Army green service uniforms for presidential inauguration

PHILADELPHIA -

Approximately 80 Army Guardsmen and reservists supporting the presidential inauguration Jan. 20, will be sharp in new Army green service uniforms, thanks to the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support's Clothing and Textiles supply chain.

From early December 2024 to just days before the inauguration, C&T team members received approximately 770 orders for 1,070 pieces to be filled of the 15-piece dress uniform ensemble, said Kevin Mackenzie, C&T supervisor of the customer relationship management team for Industries of the Blind ordering.

"We had to ensure that they are in every piece of the Army green service uniform," Mackenzie said. "The number of overnight shipments we've done, is not something we typically do."

With limited stock availability, C&T worked with customers and industry partners sourcing available items across the country to ensure the items were received in time for the event, said Alec Horan, customer account specialist lead on Mackenzie's team.

"These items are highly sought after [and] we're trying to provision every Army reservist and Army National Guard individual with the Army green service uniform by 2027," Horan said. "A lot of overnight shipments went out at Industries of the Blind, fighting through adverse weather conditions to meet this demand, and there was also the added demand of the Jimmy Carter [memorial] parade where individuals also needed to have uniforms for that event as well."

Collaboration throughout the C&T supply chain to meet this demand included support from the Strategic Materiel Sourcing Group team that oversees contracts with IOB.

"Everything was expedited and together we came up with plans of how IOB should fill the orders, and the result of that was essentially it would be an 'all hands on deck' approach from IOB where these orders were top priority to be filled," said SMSG Division Chief Catherine Dillon. To ensure timely support of this mission, IOB worked off-hours to receipt urgent deliveries of end-items and quickly repacked and shipped those items to customer locations.

In normal ordering conditions Army recruits have priority for receiving AGSUs, so Mackenzie's team coordinated with C&T's Army recruit training customer team hourly to locate uniform items not in stock at the IOB warehouse, he said. The team also sourced items from other third-party logistics locations with stock availability.

"It was a lot of coordination between us at C&T and a lot of extra effort between Alec and Kevin, working days we were technically off to get things done," Dillon said. "A lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, but all together a great effort of teamwork."

Horan described all his and his colleagues' efforts as a 'point of pride for DLA.'

"Just from a personal standpoint, Kevin and I are looking forward to seeing the results of the big push these last few weeks on the inauguration day, seeing the [servicemembers] looking sharp in their uniforms," Horan said.

A unique challenge the team encountered to fill these expedited orders included total stock unavailability for some item sizes.

"For some of the ensemble items there was no stock that existed anywhere in the country for that certain size," Horan said.

There were several soldiers that ordered the AGSU belt webbing, in a size 35, however with nonavailable, Horan and team reached out to customers to survey if they can be substituted for in-stock size 39 belt webbing, he explained.

"Essentially with this specific belt you're able to cut it down to size regardless, so we figured that as long as we ship them a larger size substitute they can cut off the extra inches and still have a belt that functions for them for the actual event," Horan said. "The result of that was we got an affirmative response from all of those individuals and about 50 or so of those size-up substitutions went out in lieu of the size 35 which was originally ordered."

Another unique challenge was IOB started filling orders for the first time around August 2024, so completing the expedited AGSU orders required coordination and teamwork outside of the norm all stakeholders were used to.

In addition to the AGSU, IOB provides all the Army clothing bag items, physical training gear and insignia, including sewing insignia directly on items for customers.

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