Reponse to US Army organizational Design

See attached file.

The United States Army's organizational design is a functional structure. I say this because it is actually comprised of three elements, which are the active/reserve, operational/administrative and headquarters/field. Each of these three elements has very defined roles. Now, if you drill down a little deeper, the Army does not produce products in the interest of profits. The Army's products are people. Each person in the Army went to initial training to do a specific job. For example, Infantry will go to an infantry unit or section, engineers to an engineer unit or section and transportation to a transportation unit or section. Like the text specifies, specialties are typically grouped with supervisors who understand their function. This type of design works for the Army and can be seen by what it is able to accomplish. The budget constraints have had an effect on efficiency, but for the most part it is effective. The Army meets its goals, it acquires the resources it needs, the internal processes work most of the time and it meets the demands and expectations of the citizens of the United States.

We have seen the Army use a modular structure in the past as it relates to out-sourcing of people. Like I said before, the Army does not make anything other than people. The tanks we use, we did not build, we do not manufacture. Our product is people, but we have seen the Army use companies like Black water for VIP security instead of Soldiers, or civilian helicopter companies in Afghanistan to deliver mail and even Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) to do the cooking instead of Soldiers. As the text states, it is efficiently combining parts into a final whole. In this case the parts are the functions that a Soldier when normally do, but out-sourced instead to get the job done. It has succeeded in the past, but can complicate the process. For example, KBR over charged the government for fuel due to internal process issues and Black water security forces would often conflict with Army operations because of internal process issues.