How digital transformation, synchronization and collaboration are modernizing uniform support

The Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support’s Clothing and Textiles supply chain has rolled out a centralized digital workspace meant to knit together its disparate tools and data streams and give employees real-time visibility into how their work supports the mission.

The initiative, called Community Hub, grew out of a simple question from the workforce: “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 support from Business Process Support and DLA Information Operations, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Deron A. Cooke, an enlisted logistics career broadener with an engineering background, led the build.

“It’s a place for all of the modernization efforts to live and centralize everything,” Cooke said. He emphasized that transparency guided the design so teammates can watch the impact of their support to warfighters as it happens. “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.

Community Hub serves as a single workspace that synchronizes tools, applications, dashboards, news, knowledge resources, and analytics used across C&T. “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 apps handle customer operations, acquisition tracking, reporting, and business intelligence. A key example is the Customer Operations Portal, which aggregates performance metrics for high-visibility items across C&T’s procurement portfolio, including more than 800 OCIE and Recruit Training Center bag items. Items are grouped by product code and display delivery quantities, national stock numbers, and assigned team members. Users can favorite items, annotate records, and set notifications by product group code. Access is role-based, and only users tied to an item can view or 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 tracks metrics such as on-time delivery and refreshes a weekly list of the supply chain’s top 100 items. Statuses are color-coded, and automated emails alert users to changes on records they support or own. According to Cooke, collaborating in a live digital environment has already sped up communication and cut meeting time. “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.”

Aggregated data can be exported into slide-based presentations to streamline collaboration and decisions. “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 drive adoption, C&T launched the Hub in February with job aids and standard operating procedures, plus instructor-led sessions and workshops. “This effort was also supported with instructor-led training sessions and Q&A workshops to assist the learning curve,” Cooke said. In June, the Executive Agent team added software and business intelligence training to build foundational skills. Early feedback from employees and leaders has been positive, according to the team.

The Hub also tracks ongoing efforts to digitize analog workflows. Seventeen innovation projects are in motion, said Randy McArthur, Innovation and Transformation team lead and field clothing division chief, who coordinates about 22 volunteers from across C&T disciplines. One priority is replacing an email-based PDF form for vendors ordering cloth with a self-service portal that routes requests automatically. “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 aims to digitize how vendors submit product demonstration model proposals and how C&T tracks evaluations. “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 formed in November 2025, around the time leadership attended an Innovation Navigators course and DLA Troop Support’s Digital Adoption Readiness Team (DART) ramped up. Catherine Dillon, Strategic Material Sourcing division chief, represents C&T on DART’s cross-functional forum. “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. The group is using workforce input to identify technology gaps and boost job efficiency. “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.

Business Process Support, which leads DART, is developing data products and automation in parallel. “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,” said Nicholas Weidman, lead demand/supply chain analyst. “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, who facilitates weekly DART meetings, said peer-to-peer sharing has accelerated progress. “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.”

Weidman said BPS is working to meet unique supply chain needs while promoting standardization where possible. “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.

Dillon underscored the value of coordinating across directorates. “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.”

“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.

According to the agency, Troop Support’s efforts align with DLA’s Digital Strategy and Strategic Plan’s Transformation Imperatives for 2025–2030, as well as DOW’s Digital Standards Strategy.