Modernizing uniform support through digital transformation, synchronization, collaboration

A personalized "welcome" in a digital item management portal invites users to the new way the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support's Clothing and Textiles supply chain is doing business.

Beyond information technology modernization and digitization directives from the Department of War to DLA Troop Support leadership, C&T team members asked, "how do we get the C&T community together?" said Jorge Valentin Torres, a supervisor on the planning Operational Clothing and Individual Equipment team.

With Valentin's vision, technical assistance from Business Process Support and DLA Information Operations, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Deron A. Cooke, an enlisted logistics career broadener with an engineering background, took on the task of building C&T's Community Hub.

"It's a place for all of the modernization efforts to live and centralize everything," Cooke said.

Transparency was critical in development, so team members can see the impact of their support to warfighters in real time, Cooke said.

"Total asset visibility is key, and it gives people an identity of 'how am I impacting the work and what's my real purpose here?'" Cooke said.

Digital tools improve synchronization within Clothing and Textiles

Community Hub is a digital workspace synchronizing the tools, applications, dashboards, news, knowledge resources and analytics used across C&T into a single collaborative environment, Cooke said.

"Rather than serving as a single application, it provides a central location where teams can access information, share knowledge, and manage operations," Cooke continued.

Within the hub, specialized applications support specific mission areas, including customer operations, acquisition tracking, reporting, and business intelligence. Together these tools improve visibility across the supply chain while reducing manual processes and improving communication.

For example, the Customer Operations Portal is an application that tracks the operational metrics of high-visibility assets. The tool aggregates information about items across C&T's procurement portfolio including over 800 OCIE and Recruit Training Center bag items.

Items are categorized by product group code, and include details such as delivery quantities, number of national stock numbers and the team members associated with the item. Users can follow items by "favorite," add notes and receive notifications by PGC, Cooke explained.

The portal is tailored for each user, tracking items respectively managed by each team member, and permissions to update data are assigned by a user's role and organizational level to ensure information integrity. Only users related to an item can access and edit its information.

"You have a customer account specialist, a planner, technical and you have contracting, and as each discipline comes to share their information aggregated into these visuals," Valentin said, "it's not only the part of management looking at it, at the same token here's the perfect collaboration."

Integrated with C&T's item management software, the portal also tracks various metrics including on-time delivery and each week a list is replenished with the supply chain's top 100 items, Cooke said. Items' statuses are categorized by color, such as red to indicate items on backorder, and automated emails keep users informed of updates and changes to the records they support or own.

Collaborating in a live digital environment is having a positive impact on daily activities including increasing the speed of communication and reducing meeting time, Cooke said.

"It saves a lot of time for a lot of people," Cooke said. "From my experience with visibility, you need some sense of uniformity, and I think this creates a good balance of uniformity where everyone can come in and put their 'two cents' and makes the full picture from all of the different puzzle pieces."

Synchronization across disciplines allows users and leadership to turn aggregated data into slide-based presentations that support collaboration and faster decision-making.

"In the past we used to have seven to eight (slide) presentations depending on each division," Valentin said. "(Now) everyone can go to one place and edit and collaborate in a live, shared hub environment, and if there are any doubts or questions, they can see that the data aligns. It refines the data for each end user."

To ensure accessibility and support adoption, C&T hosted a series of training sessions, with Community Hub's initial launch in February. Job Aids and Standard Operating Procedures were developed to educate the workforce on how to utilize Community Hub and its suite of digital tools.

"This effort was also supported with instructor-led training sessions and Q&A workshops to assist the learning curve," Cooke said.

In June, the C&T Executive Agent team expanded the initiative to include software and business intelligence training to help employees build foundational skills and better understand the organization's modernization efforts, Cooke said.

So far, feedback from team members and leadership is positive, he continued.

Innovation and digital transformation is a team effort

Community Hub also tracks C&T's ongoing innovation projects to digitize analog workflows, including 17 projects underway, said Randy McArthur, Innovation and Transformation team lead and field clothing division chief.

McArthur champions a team of approximately 22 volunteer-members across C&T's disciplines, including customer account specialists, contract specialists, product specialists and supply planners.

One project the team is working on is updating an email form submission process for vendors ordering cloth for production, in which they currently email a PDF form to the contract specialist, who then routes it to a planner for review and ultimately a customer account specialist submits an order.

"It's a very manually intensive, drawn-out process that has a lot of chance for errors, especially if the contractor sends it to the wrong POC," McArthur said. "So, we're working on a portal where the vendors are able to go into a website and just order it and that whole workflow will flow automatically."

Another project is streamlining how vendors submit product demonstration model proposals to ensure they can make an item, McArthur said. The current process is manual communication amongst C&T team members via email or in-person check-ins with coworkers for status updates.

"Right now, there's no way for us to track how many PDMs are submitted, or what the status of an evaluation is," McArthur said.

C&T's Innovation and Transformation team was established in November 2025, around the time its leadership attended an Innovation Navigators course, and Troop Support's Digital Adoption Readiness Team efforts began.

C&T's innovation efforts expand collaboration across supply chains

Catherine Dillon, Strategic Material Sourcing division chief, represents C&T on DART's cross-functional team of representatives with varying job duties from each supply chain and staff offices.

"I've been able to share, with DART, the progress C&T is making through the Innovation team as we gather information from the C&T workforce," Dillon said.

Dillon and the Innovation and Transformation team gauge the C&T workforce's current technology experience to understand where to fill information gaps with the goal of increasing job efficiency, she said.

"This information, as well as C&T's Community Hub creation and its continuous additions, have been shared with the rest of DART which will help in identifying the next steps in order to bridge the technology/digital gap," Dillon said.

DART is led by BPS, which supports each DLA Troop Support supply chain through ad hoc data requests, dashboards, automated reporting, and analytical tools that improve efficiency and provide greater visibility into operations, said Nicholas Weidman, lead demand/supply chain analyst.

"Many one-time data requests evolve into long-term digital solutions that help identify trends, monitor risk, automate processes, and provide leadership and end users with timely, accurate data for decision-making," Weidman said.

Weidman works closely with C&T to modernize reporting and business processes to replace manual spreadsheets and legacy reporting, including supporting the business intelligence dashboards within the Community Hub.

"My focus is on providing real-time visibility into inventory, backorders, vendor performance, and supply chain health to support faster, data-driven decisions," he said. "While BPS did not develop the Hub itself, our role has been to deliver data-driven applications that improve visibility and streamline access to information. Similar efforts are being explored across other supply chains as digital transformation continues."

Continuous Process Improvement Branch Chief Maximo Ayala facilitates weekly DART meetings with supply chain representatives, discussing the implementation and adoption of newly developed digital tools.

"Different supply chains propose different plans on how to move forward, C&T has been more active and been able to move forward faster, and what happens is during these DART meetings, they share what they have been doing," Ayala said. "C&T has been instrumental in showcasing things they have been working on that they can show success as well as things that didn't work as intended so other people don't go that path."

BPS works closely with each supply chain to understand operational challenges and build solutions that meet their specific needs while promoting standardization where possible, Weidman said.

"By sharing best practices, developing reusable tools, and centralizing data, we help reduce duplicate work, improve efficiency, and provide leadership with timely, accurate, and reliable data to support informed decision-making," Weidman continued.

Collaboration across supply chains is extremely important when it comes to innovation, Dillon said.

"It ensures we're not duplicating our efforts and can lead to sharing already developed apps/technologies instead of 're-inventing the wheel,'" Dillon said. "Collaborating also helps in gaining traction for approval and funding. If one directorate uses it, it may not be as big of a concern or priority but if you work together and see that it could be used by all supply chains here at Troop Support or even at other parts of the agency, it makes turning ideas into action much more possible than going at it alone."

With an agency-wide emphasis on digital transformation, Weidman said one of the most rewarding aspects of his work is seeing ideas from the workforce become solutions that directly support the mission.

"Digital transformation isn't just about new technology - it's about partnering with the people doing the work every day and building tools that make their jobs easier, improve decision-making, and ultimately strengthen support to the warfighter," Weidman said.

DLA Troop Support's digital transformation efforts are aligned with DLA's Digital Strategy and Strategic Plan's Transformation Imperatives for 2025-2030 and DOW's Digital Standards Strategy.