12.1. Global Freight Management, Military Traffic Management Command, Mission

As a core agency in the MTMC, the FSD is responsible for supporting the procurement of commercial freight transportation services for the DoD—serving the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), as well as the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). These transportation services provide a key capability within the logistical operations of the armed forces.

Taking its cue from the private sector, the DoD has been working for several years to implement time- and cost-saving concepts, such as just-in-time logistics, which help to reduce stockpiles of raw materials and finished components. This new approach requires forging relationships with material vendors, as well as with transportation companies that deliver products to destinations only when they are needed, instead of requiring the destinations to keep surplus inventory. Along these lines, it was the FSD's mission to provide DoD traffic managers with an automated e-commerce capability for the procurement of commercial freight transportation services and to provide real-time feed data to war fighters.

Playing a central role in the establishment and management of these relationships, the FSD is tasked with selecting freight carriers, costing, generating shipping documentation, and managing the freight movements by road, rail, air, and sea. More than 3,000 traffic managers in 800 FSD locations across the United States perform these tasks through an e-commerce and EDI system called Global Freight Management system (GFM). The GFM system incorporates multiple applications, including the Freight Acquisition Shipping Tool (FAST), the main shipment processing application; Spot Bid, a tool for posting open shipments for bid on the Web; Guaranteed Traffic (GT) Bid Submission, which allows electronic submission of tenders against GT traffic solicitations; and various reporting and traffic management mechanisms. All told, GFM manages 800,000 shipments per year, worth approximately US$600 million.