The roots of the DLIS mission trace back to the World War II era when each of the military services operated independently and maintained a separate supply system with its own methods and procedures for cataloging their items. As a result, many items were given a different name by each of the services, making efficient use of available stock impossible. These inefficiencies led to the passage of two key laws after the war. Public Law 81-152, the Federal Property & Administration Services Act of 1949, called for the establishment of a common logistics language known as the Federal Catalog System (FCS). The first Federal stock number was assigned by the Army-Navy Munitions Board in 1949. In 1952, Public Law 82-436, Defense Cataloging and Standardization Act was passed assigning the responsibility for creating and maintaining this system to the Department of Defense (DoD).

In 1958, the DoD established a new agency in Washington, D.C., the Armed Forces Supply Support Center (AFSSC) and assigned it the mission of administration of the FCS. When the Defense Supply Agency (now Defense Logistics Agency or DLA) was created in 1961, DoD delegated this responsibility and mission to DLA along with management oversight of the AFSSC. Soon afterwards, the decision was made to rename the AFSSC to the Defense Logistics Services Center (DLSC) and relocate the center to Battle Creek, Michigan. DLSC became fully operational in Battle Creek in January 1963. At this time, DLSC was assigned two additional DoD programs, surplus sales and recycling usable equipment. In 1971, as the result of a congressional commission recommendation to centralize all aspects of DoD property disposal these programs were transferred over to a new agency established in the Federal Center, previously known as the Defense Property Disposal Service (currently Defense Reutilization Marketing Service).

Since its establishment, DLSC has undergone several major operational changes. In 1965, the Defense Integrated Data System, commonly referred to as DIDS, was approved which began the ten year initiative to automate the FCS. This was followed by a major reorganization creating the new Directorate of Systems Management and the Office of Telecommunications and Information Systems. In 1985, the DoD tasked DLSC with the development of the Military Engineering Data Asset Locator System. MEDALS is an automated data repository utilized by engineers, equipment specialists, catalogers and provisioners to facilitate the location of technical data and engineering drawings. The next major milestone was the development and implementation of the modernized system known as the Federal Logistics Information System (FLIS), a 12 year, $61M project. The modernized system afforded DLSC the capability to develop various state-of-the-art technological advancements in logistics information distribution ranging from tailored extracts to CD-ROM and On-Line services.

The 1990s brought about many changes for DLSC. In 1993 was the 30th Anniversary celebration, along with the decision to remove DLSC from the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list. In 1996 the modernized computer system migrated to the Megacenter in Columbus, Ohio along with the technical systems operators. However, in 1997 the DoD decision was made to centralize and consolidate cataloging for the entire Defense Department in Battle Creek. Culminating this announcement, on January 18, 1998, DLSC's name was changed to better reflect its new mission to the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS). In January 2000, DLIS completed the entire DoD cataloging transition seven months ahead of the original OSD schedule. DLIS is now streamlining the internal cataloging processes yielding practices that are more efficient and better use of resources.