Lesson Overview
A team on a task is a thing that consumes. It drinks water, eats rations, burns through batteries and fuel, and uses up medical and other stores at a steady, knowable rate, and the moment any one of those runs out the team stops being useful. Resupply is the work of keeping the flow going: of making sure the next load of what the team will need is already on its way before the team feels the lack. Done well, it is invisible, because nobody ever runs short. Done badly, or left to luck, it announces itself as an empty water can, a flat radio, or a section sat waiting for rations that nobody thought to send. This lesson is about keeping supplies flowing, which is the heart of sustainment.
The tool for thinking about that flow is the demand cycle: demand, source, deliver, use, and then return or dispose, turning over and over while replenishment tops the stock back up to the level the plan set. Around that cycle sit two ways of pushing stores forward. Push resupply sends stores on a schedule by what is expected to be needed, so a busy team is kept stocked without having to ask. Pull resupply sends stores in response to a team's own demand, so what goes forward is exactly what the team says it wants. A small force uses both, and the skill is knowing which suits a given task. The lesson then puts the two together into a single resupply plan forward to a team, the plan that answers what, how much, by what means, to where, and when.
This is the knowledge layer. Reading will teach you to think in cycles and to plan a resupply, but the stores work that sits underneath it, the signing for receipts and issues, the stocktaking, the physical storekeeping that keeps the ledger true, is practised and signed off in person, where supervision allows, on the storehouse floor and on airsoft milsim exercises. A plan only holds together if the records beneath it are honest. By the end you will be able to describe the demand cycle and the place of replenishment within it, explain the difference between push and pull resupply and choose the one that suits a small force on a given task, set and use a stock level with a trigger point so resupply is called for in time, and build a resupply plan that answers what, how much, by what means, to where, and when, and write it as a clear demand a storekeeper can act on.
Key Terms
- Resupply: the act of moving fresh stores forward to a team so it can keep going; the practical work of sustainment in the field.
- Demand cycle: the repeating loop a commodity moves through, demand to source to deliver to use to return or dispose, kept turning by replenishment.
- Demand: a formal request for stores, stating what is wanted, how much, and by when; the start of the cycle and the thing a storekeeper acts on.
- Source: finding the stores to meet a demand, from stock held in the storehouse or, if there is none, by procurement under LOG 220.
- Replenishment: topping stock back up to the planned level after it has been drawn down, so the store is ready for the next demand.
- Stock level (holding): the quantity of a commodity the plan says should be held, set from consumption rate and how long resupply takes to arrive.
- Trigger point (reorder level): the level of stock at which resupply must be called for, set high enough that fresh stores arrive before the stock runs out.
- Consumption rate: how fast a commodity is used, expressed per person per day, per device per day, or per vehicle per hour; the figure all sustainment planning is built on.
- Push resupply: stores sent forward on a schedule, by what is expected to be needed, without the team having to ask each time.
- Pull resupply: stores sent forward in response to a team's stated demand, so exactly what is asked for goes forward.
- Resupply point (RP): the agreed place and time where stores are handed over to the team; named and timed so both sides meet without confusion.
- Lead time: the time between a demand being raised and the stores arriving with the team; the figure that decides how early you must trigger resupply.
Keeping the flow going: the demand cycle
Stores are not a thing you deliver once and forget. The useful picture is a cycle that never stops turning for as long as the team is in the field, and the storekeeper's job is to keep it turning so smoothly that the team never notices it at all. The cycle has five stations, and a commodity passes through every one of them.
It begins with demand: a request for stores, stating what, how much, and by when. The demand may come up from a team that knows it is running low, or it may be raised by the planner who can see, from consumption rates, that the team is about to. Then comes source: finding the stores to meet that demand, first from stock held in the storehouse, and only if there is none from procurement, which is the business of LOG 220. Next is deliver: moving the stores forward to the team, which is transport and movement, the subject of Lesson 05. Then use: the team draws the stores down, drinking, eating, burning, treating, at its own steady rate. And finally return or dispose: what is left over, what is empty, what is broken, and what must be turned in comes back, the empties and the unserviceable and the unused, so the system stays accountable and nothing is simply abandoned in the field.
What keeps the cycle from grinding to a halt is replenishment: as the team uses its stock, the store quietly tops it back up to the planned level, so that the next demand can be met without delay. Replenishment is the difference between a system that responds only after a crisis and one that is always a step ahead. The plan sets a level the team should hold, the team draws it down, and replenishment puts it back, over and over, for as long as the task lasts.
THE DEMAND CYCLE · kept turning by replenishment
+--------------+
| 1. DEMAND |
| what, how |
| much, when |
+------+-------+
|
v
+-----------+ +----+-----+ +-------------+
| 5. RETURN |<--| (turning)|-->| 2. SOURCE |
| OR | | loop | | from stock, |
| DISPOSE | | | | else procure|
| empties, | +----+-----+ +------+------+
| u/s, spare| ^ |
+-----+-----+ | v
| | +------+------+
| +-----+------+ | 3. DELIVER |
+------->| 4. USE |<-+ move it |
| team draws | | forward |
| down stock | +-------------+
+-----+------+
|
v
+---------+----------+
| REPLENISHMENT |
| tops stock back |
| up to the planned |
| level, every loop |
+--------------------+
The loop never stops while the team is in the field. Replenishment
is what keeps the store one step AHEAD of the team's consumption.
Stock levels and the trigger point
Replenishment only works if you know when to act, and "when the can is empty" is too late, because by then the team is already short. The answer is to plan two numbers for every commodity and let them do the deciding for you. The first is the stock level, the quantity the plan says the team should hold, worked out from how fast the commodity is used and how long it lasts. The second is the trigger point, the level at which fresh stock must be called for, set high enough that the resupply arrives before the stock on hand runs out.
The trigger point is the clever part, and it turns entirely on lead time: the time between raising a demand and the stores actually reaching the team. If a team uses water at a known rate, and resupply takes a day to reach it from the demand being raised, then the trigger point must be set at one day's worth of water plus a sensible margin still in hand. Call for resupply when stock falls to that level and the new water arrives with a little to spare; wait until the can looks low and the team runs dry while the resupply is still on the road. The rule is simple to say and easy to get wrong under pressure, so it is planned in advance: trigger early enough that delivery beats the empty.
A worked figure makes it concrete. Suppose a section of eight is working hard in warm weather and the planner has set a working consumption figure of six litres of drinking water per person per day, which is forty-eight litres a day for the section. The plan says hold two days' stock, ninety-six litres, in cans at the team. Lead time for resupply is half a day. The trigger point is therefore set at one day's stock, forty-eight litres, which is half a day's use as a margin on top of the half day the delivery will take. When the cans come down to forty-eight litres, the demand goes up, and a fresh load arrives before the team is anywhere near dry.
STOCK LEVEL AND TRIGGER · section water, worked example
litres
held
96 |XXXXXXX <- planned stock level (2 days)
88 | XXXXXX
80 | XXXXX
72 | XXXX team uses 48 L/day
64 | XXX
56 | XX
48 |......XX............... <- TRIGGER POINT (1 day stock = lead
40 | \ resupply time 1/2 day + 1/2 day margin)
32 | \ in transit --> DEMAND RAISED HERE
24 | \
16 | \ (would run dry here if no resupply)
0 |___________X____________________
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3
^ resupply arrives, stock topped back to 96
Trigger BEFORE the empty, never at it. Margin covers a late
delivery, a hot day, or a heavier-than-planned consumption rate.
Push and pull: two ways to send stores forward
There are two basic ways to get stores forward to a team, and a small force uses both, switching between them as the task demands. The difference is simply who decides what goes forward.
Pull resupply is demand led. The team works out what it needs, raises a demand, and the store sources and sends exactly that forward. Nothing moves until the team asks. The strength of pull is precision: what goes forward is what was actually wanted, so nothing is wasted carrying stores the team did not need, and the team controls its own resupply. The weakness is that it depends on the team having the time, the attention, and a working means of communication to raise the demand in the first place. A team that is busy, in contact with a problem, or out of communications cannot pull, and if it forgets to demand until it is nearly dry, the lead time may beat it. Pull suits a steady, predictable task with good communications, a deliberate operation where the team can think clearly about what it wants and ask for it in good time.
Push resupply is plan led. The planner, working from consumption rates, sends forward what the team is expected to need, on a schedule, without waiting to be asked. A daily water and ration run that goes out whether or not anyone demanded it is a push. The strength of push is that it keeps a team stocked when it is too busy, too stressed, or too far out of contact to ask, and it takes the burden of remembering off the team at the worst possible time. The weakness is that it relies on the planner's estimate being right; push the wrong things, or the wrong amounts, and you either starve the team of what it actually needed or clog its position with stores it cannot use, and either way you have wasted transport that was not free. Push suits the early, fast-moving, or hard-pressed phase of a task, and it suits a humanitarian operation where the need is broadly known in advance and the people being helped cannot raise demands of their own.
The practised answer is rarely one or the other. A team is commonly kept on a steady push of the predictable commodities, the daily water and rations and a standard battery pack, while everything irregular, the specific spare, the extra medical item, the unexpected need, is left to pull. The push keeps the team alive without it having to think; the pull lets it ask for the particular things no schedule could have predicted. Choosing the mix is a judgement about how busy the team will be, how good its communications are, and how predictable its consumption is.
PUSH vs PULL · choosing for a small force
+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| | PUSH | PULL |
| | (plan led, schedule)| (team led, on demand)|
+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| Who decides | the planner, from | the team, by raising|
| what goes | expected need | a demand |
+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| Strength | keeps a busy or | precise; only what |
| | out-of-comms team | is actually wanted |
| | stocked, no asking | goes forward |
+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| Weakness | wrong if the | fails if team is |
| | estimate is wrong; | busy, late to ask, |
| | can waste transport | or out of comms |
+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| Best when | early/fast/hard- | steady, predictable |
| | pressed phase; | task with good |
| | relief distribution | communications |
+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+
| Commodity fit | predictable: water, | irregular: a spare, |
| | rations, batteries | an extra med item |
+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+
Common practice: PUSH the predictable daily commodities,
PULL everything irregular. Use both; match the mix to the task.
Planning a resupply forward to a team
A resupply, whether pushed or pulled, is a plan, and a good plan answers five plain questions. Hold them as a checklist and no resupply will go forward half thought through.
What: which commodities, named clearly enough that the storekeeper can pick them without guessing. "Resupply the section" is not a demand; "water, rations, and AA batteries" is the start of one. Name the item, and where it matters, the class and the condition you want, serviceable and checked.
How much: the quantity of each, worked out from consumption rate and the period the resupply must cover, with a sensible margin. This is where the planning of the first lesson pays off: if you know the section uses forty-eight litres of water a day and the resupply covers two days, you ask for ninety-six litres plus a margin, not "some water". A number a storekeeper can count to is a demand; a vague request is a problem passed forward.
By what means: how the stores will travel, by vehicle, by trailer, or carried by hand, which is load planning and movement, the subject of Lesson 05. The means must be able to carry the weight and reach the place, and the most important stores are loaded so they travel first and come off first.
To where: the resupply point, the agreed place the stores are handed over. Name it plainly and unambiguously, a grid, a feature, or a known location, so both the team and the delivery meet at the same spot rather than two hundred metres and one hedge apart.
When: the time the resupply is wanted, set by working back from when the team will need it and allowing for the lead time. "By when" is the question that makes a demand actionable, because it tells the storekeeper how hard to chase it and the mover when to leave.
Written down in that order, what, how much, by what means, to where, and when, a resupply demand is a thing a storekeeper can act on without coming back to ask. Left as "send the section some stores", it is a problem you have handed on rather than solved. The format below is the demand a planner raises and a storekeeper fills; it is deliberately short, because a demand that is quick to write is a demand that gets written in time.
RESUPPLY DEMAND · forward to a team
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| DEMAND No: ............ DATE/TIME RAISED: .......... |
| FROM (team / call sign): .............................. |
| PRIORITY: routine / priority / immediate |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| WHAT | HOW MUCH | CONDITION / NOTE |
+----------------+------------------+------------------------+
| Water (drink) | 96 L (2 days) | treated, in cans |
| Rations | 16 man-days | field ration packs |
| AA batteries | 3 packs | serviceable, sealed |
| ............ | ............ | ............ |
+----------------+------------------+------------------------+
| BY WHAT MEANS: vehicle / trailer / manual carry |
| TO WHERE (resupply point): ............................ |
| WHEN (wanted by): ...................................... |
| RAISED BY: ............ FILLED BY (storekeeper): ..... |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Five questions, in order: WHAT, HOW MUCH, BY WHAT MEANS,
TO WHERE, WHEN. A demand that answers all five can be acted
on without a single clarifying call back.
A last point ties the resupply back to the cycle and to honest stores work. When the resupply goes forward it is an issue, and it is signed for: the storekeeper signs it out, the team signs it in, and the ledger records that the stores have moved and who now holds them, exactly as LOG 201 requires. When the empties, the unserviceable, and the unused come back, that is the return leg of the cycle, and it is signed for too. Resupply is not a thing that happens off the books. Every load that moves forward and every load that comes back is a transaction, because the moment the records stop being trusted the force can no longer know what it has or where, and the whole cycle loses its meaning. You sign for it, you own it, in the field as much as in the storehouse.
In Practice: A storekeeper keeps a relief team supplied
A small section is sent to help at a community cut off by flooding, distributing clean water and blankets from a forward point for what is expected to be three days. Corporal Adeyemi holds the Quartermaster and Logistics speciality and is running the sustainment from a vehicle harbour an hour back down the only passable road.
She plans the team's own stock first. Eight members, working hard, in damp and tiring conditions: she sets six litres of drinking water per person per day for the team itself, forty-eight litres a day, and holds two days forward with them. For the people being helped she works from the Sphere figure she learned in Lesson 03's reading, around fifteen litres per person per day, and against an estimated two hundred people that is a far larger flow, which she treats quite separately from the team's own water so the two are never confused.
For the team's own stock she runs pull: the section has a working radio, the task is steady, and she trusts them to demand in good time, so she sets a trigger point at one day's water and waits for their call. For the relief water and the blankets going out to the community she runs push: the need is broadly known, the people cannot raise demands of their own, and the team will be too busy distributing to ask, so she sends a planned load forward on a daily schedule whether or not anyone calls for it. The irregular items, a replacement pump part, extra first-aid stores after a minor injury, she leaves to pull, filling them as the team demands.
On the second afternoon the section's water trigger is reached and a demand comes up the radio: ninety-six litres of treated water, sixteen man-days of rations, and a pack of batteries for the team's set, wanted at the road junction resupply point by last light. Adeyemi fills it from stock, signs it out, loads it with the heavy water cans last on and first off, and sends it forward by vehicle to arrive with an hour of daylight in hand. The empties and a bag of unserviceable kit come back on the same vehicle, signed in, and her ledger closes the loop. The team never runs short, the community is supplied on schedule, and not one transaction has gone unrecorded. The logistics of helping was the help.
Check Your Understanding
- Name the five stations of the demand cycle in order, and explain what replenishment does to keep the cycle turning.
- A section uses sixty litres of water a day, holds two days' stock, and resupply takes half a day to arrive from the demand being raised. At roughly what level of stock should the trigger point be set, and why must it be set above empty rather than at it?
- Give one task or commodity for which push resupply is the better choice and one for which pull is better, and say what feature of each task drove your answer.
Reflection (write a short paragraph): Think of a time, in any activity, when something simple ran out at the wrong moment because nobody planned the resupply, a charger, a fuel can, a printer cartridge, a water bottle. What was the consumption rate that should have been obvious in advance, what would the trigger point have been, and would push or pull have served you better in that situation?
Summary
- Resupply is the work of keeping supplies flowing forward so a team never runs short; done well it is invisible, done by luck it announces itself as an empty can or a flat battery.
- The demand cycle turns through five stations, demand, source, deliver, use, and return or dispose, and replenishment tops stock back up to the planned level so the store stays one step ahead of consumption.
- Set a stock level and a trigger point for every commodity; trigger resupply early enough, allowing for lead time and a margin, that delivery beats the empty.
- Push resupply sends stores on a schedule by expected need and suits a busy, hard-pressed, or out-of-comms team and relief distribution; pull resupply sends stores on the team's demand and suits a steady, predictable task with good communications; a small force uses both and matches the mix to the task.
- Plan every resupply against five questions, what, how much, by what means, to where, and when, and write it as a short demand a storekeeper can act on without asking back.
- Every load forward is a signed issue and every load back is a signed return; resupply stays on the books, because the moment the records cannot be trusted the force no longer knows what it has.
- Builds on LOG 201 · Stores, Equipment, and Accountability (ledgers, issues, returns, the maxim that you sign for it, you own it) and on Lesson 01 · Sustaining a Force in the Field (consumption rates and the sustainment estimate). Leads into Lesson 03 · Water, Rations, and Welfare, Lesson 04 · Power, Fuel, and Batteries, and Lesson 05 · Transport, Load Planning, and Movement. Connects to LOG 220 · Procurement and Supply Administration (sourcing what stock cannot meet), PME 210 · Basic Staff Duties (writing the demand into orders and records), SIG (battery and power demands), MED 210 · Field Health (safe water and medical stores), and HCR 201/210 (the orderly, fair distribution of relief).
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