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The Defense Logistics Agency has launched an Agency Transformation Center intended to speed adoption of artificial intelligence and overhaul core business processes in support of military customers. The hub, which began operations July 15, will synchronize modernization, drive process reengineering and implement a unified digital backbone across the agency. Army Maj. Gen. Stephanie Howard is serving as director, with Sean De Lorenzo as deputy.
“If we ignore this technology and continue to operate the way we operate today, I would contend DLA could become irrelevant,” Howard said.
Leaders said the effort will build on existing organizational structures and AI pilots rather than start from scratch, with early goals focused on cutting steps from complex workflows and empowering process experts to identify where automation can help. A major thrust will be change management for a large, experienced workforce that must be comfortable adopting new tools while preserving hard-won expertise. De Lorenzo said modernization is essential to keep DLA at the forefront of warfighter support now that agentic AI tools have demonstrated value.
Howard and De Lorenzo emphasized that AI is intended to augment employees, not replace them. “It enhances our abilities as humans to be able to make those intelligent decisions,” he said. “Yes, there may be changes in roles, responsibilities and how people interact with the systems, but that can be trained. At the end of the day, this is an enabler.”
Employees can engage through formal roles on eight domain teams or by using agency AI tools and providing feedback. The center will also coordinate with existing AI initiatives across DLA to share lessons learned and best practices.
A top priority is breaking down data and system silos. An initial use case targets inventory visibility at the National Item Identification Number level. “All our warehouses across the world, down to the bin, down to the rack, down to the NIIN, you can see,” she said. “Your first question might be, are you telling me DLA didn’t have that capability before? Well, we had it, but you had to go into different systems, and you had to look at different screens.
“That’s what we’re talking about — going from lots of processes to fewer,” she continued. “You can open your computer, and whatever you need to see is right there. Or let’s even go one step further, you can have AI agents running in the background to flag things to focus on.”
To enable that visibility, DLA is building a digital backbone by consolidating data into a single cloud environment accessible across the enterprise. “We are well on the way to getting all of DLA’s data,” Howard said. “But then imagine our capability once we bring in data from the services, data from industry, data from other external sources. When it’s all together, imagine how much better our decision making could be. That’s what we would see through this transformation.”
De Lorenzo described the end state as a supply chain orchestration and visualization capability that fuses internal and external data to guide decisions and present information intuitively, including geographically. “In real world situations, such as fires on the West Coast, you can see the fire line and say, ‘Okay, I have this vendor base that’s at risk,’ or ‘I have this warehouse that’s at risk,’” he explained. “What’s the impact to my customers? Do I need to move their inventory? Having that visual picture helps people understand the impact more than seeing numbers on a spreadsheet.”
The ATC is designed as an 18-month stand-up to establish frameworks and a culture of continuous modernization before transitioning its mission to the broader organization. “The first 18 months is just the beginning,” De Lorenzo said. “This is never really over, if done correctly. You’re always in a mode of assessment, refinement and then going back and implementing. And then you do it again.”
