Recommendation 17

This issue arose because the contract applied a general target across all commodity supply.38 However, this meant that lower performance in supplying medical inventory (which generally requires higher performance than other commodities) was masked by better performance elsewhere. In addition, best practice for other commodities is to bring forward stock with low shelf lives to minimise wastage, but this approach is not appropriate when deploying on a ship for three or six months. The MoD told us it has now adjusted the management software to account for the shelf-life issue.39