Photo by Dong Haijun
Mid summer witnessed an ammunition depot of the Nanjing Military Area
Command holding a water-land-air multiple-point ammunition delivery exercise in
northern Jiangsu Province. In the dock of a cannel, 20 fully-loaded trucks were
seen unloading ammunitions to civilian boats. On a platform of a railway
station, more than 10 fork-trucks were busying all the time to load ammunitions
onto trains. And in an airport near the place where the troops were stationed,
the officers and men as well as the workers of civil aviation were trying to
identify the best ways of loading the ammunitions into the cabin.
IT-based management ensures accurate and effective work
As the depot stores large varieties of ammunitions and components, the
traditional manual registration has such a low efficiency that it has become a
bottleneck restricting the emergency support in wartime. To address this
problem, the depot took the initiative to cooperate with an armament research
institute and spent half a year on developing the "bar code radio frequency
management system" which is capable of doing real-time tracking and terminal
management, and features visual display, expeditious operation, convenience and
accuracy. As soon as the depot-keeper scans the bar code with a radio frequency
instrument in his hand, such information as warehousing time and the performance
of the articles in the boxes will be displayed on the screen of computer.
Module formation realizes optimal grouping
According to Xiao Hepeng, political commissar of the depot, thanks to the
on-the-job training aiming at making the troops "expert in one thing and
versatile at many" and the module grouping conducted by the depot in peacetime,
they would be still in the position to maintain normal operation in wartime even
when they suffered a 20% to 30% depletion of strength.
The depot stores equipments of 100-odd varieties in more than 20
specialties. By making the troops going through the on-the-job training of
"expert in one thing and versatile at many", a batch of "jack-of-all-trade"
personnel who are capable of operating various machines has mushroomed.
On the basis of the "expert in one thing and versatile at many" training,
the depot carried out module regrouping to its staff and equipment in line with
the principle of "simplified the operational process, optimized the strength and
organization", and realized module integration according to actual demand of
various tasks. After being informed that 16 train wagons of special ammunitions
needed delivery in late February, the depot evoked an emergency support preplan
and dispatched staff and equipment orderly by way of module grouping, which
resulted in shrinking the time by one hour and 20 minutes than originally
planned.
Building up a new mechanism in wartime
Fixing its eyes on the demands for support in the future operations, it has
put in place a rapid support system for wartime together with the local traffic
and transportation departments and opened a three-dimensional support channel
leading up to battlefield.
At the same time, the depot is active to probe into
new fields of shipping. Working together and coordinated with the relevant
aviation departments, it has mapped out the Emergency Support Preplan for
Ammunition and Equipment Shipping
and formed a tentative emergency mechanism for shipping support in wartime.
In addition, the depot has built a wartime waterway
support channel. It has hatched the Emergency Support Preplan for Shipping
Ammunition by Water
and held
dock loading and unloading exercises regularly with the relevant departments,
for the purpose of enhancing its support capability in shipping ammunition and
equipment by water in wartime. In last September, the depot held an exercise on
a simulated setting that the railway was blown up in wartime. During the
exercise, the officers and men successfully delivered the ammunitions to the
front by using boats for civilian use.
By Dai Feng, Liu Guangbo and Qu Weifeng
(Aug 18, PLA
Daily)
Editor: Dong Zhaohui
