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Flight changes two processes, saves man hours

  • Published
  • By Brandice J. O'Brien
  • Tinker Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  One Tinker unit recently saw an opportunity for change and improvement, and leapt on it. Fast forward seven months and the 565th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron's B-52 Production Flight is on the brink of excellence, saving hundreds of man hours each week.
The unit has changed the way it cares for an aircraft. Previously, when a B-52 Stratofortress arrived at Bldg. 2121 for programmed depot maintenance, it was put in a dock where specialized crews came to the aircraft to perform a task. Now, when an aircraft arrives one primary crew stays with the aircraft from start to finish, performing most or all of the work. Additionally, the crew has a production status board to monitor their work.

"At Tinker we need to standardize our processes and this is one way to do that," said Homer Whitt, lead facilitator at the 76th Aircraft Maintenance Group Transformation Office, who oversaw the project. "Without standardized processes, it's impossible to implement corrective actions and measure improvement within a process. Here, we're standardizing our scheduling, tasks and reducing variation in the process."

The change began when Randy Sneed, 565th AMXS

B-52 Production Flight chief, requested the transformation office perform a value stream analysis. Mr. Whitt and John Wolf, 76th AMXG Transform-ation Office analyst, studied the flight's processes with a team comprised of mechanics selected from the B-52 flight, Concerto Administrative personnel, planners, air logistics specialists and forward logistics specialists. The team discovered many man hours were lost because of specialized skilled crews. The crews moved from one aircraft to another to another. As part of their daily duties, they checked tools in and out and walked from one dock to the next. Each time an individual moved from one aircraft to another, at least a half hour of labor was lost.

"Just the walking time, down time, tooling and retooling, changing tech data and parts supply to move to another task is a daunting effort," Mr. Sneed said. "We were losing too much time roaming around and sometimes, 20 minutes into the job a supervisor might call an employee to do a different task."

Something had to change.

Approximately five months ago, Mr. Whitt and Mr. Wolf worked with B-52 leadership to introduce the cell concept already in use in other weapon systems in the aircraft maintenance group, in which a crew stays with one plane, performing primary aircraft and sheet metal duties. Three floating crews execute electric rewire modifications, fuel, and hydraulic tasks.

"It helps the mechanics to become experts in multiple areas, and they can take ownership of the airplane," Mr. Sneed said. "Instead of being so specialized that they only work on one strut on one wing and that's all they ever do, they're now working the whole aircraft. It's making them more well-rounded mechanics and adds more value to the process."

Since introducing the cell concept, travel time has been reduced by approximately 75 percent, which equates to roughly 250 man hours a week.

Once the flight was familiarized with the cell concept, officials introduced a second change -- the production status board or "script." The script was developed by a team of lead mechanics during the value stream mapping event. The status board is a living document and is constantly evolving as additional variations in the process and constraints are identified and eliminated as "waste" in the process.

Similar to the 564th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron Inspection Dock's production status board launched early in 2010, the flight's board is a visual tool to show standings and issues of the aircraft assigned to a specific dock. The boards are updated during the shift to reflect real time status for all involved.

"Part of the dock-cell concept is developing a script that shows line-by-line an itemized tasking of what the crew is supposed to work for the day," Mr. Wolf said. "The script also shows when the crew is supposed to start and complete a task."

Using red, yellow and green indicators to mark task start and finish times -- early, on-time, late -- respectively, transformation office personnel along with squadron leadership can study trends, issues with the script task timing and later determine methods to cut flow days.

"The script itself affects the most people," said Mike Bassham, Dock 6 sheet metal supervisor. "If there's not a roadmap, then everybody is going in different directions."

While the change is not fully complete, the flight is on its way and personnel are responding positively to it.

"We're 70 percent there," Mr. Whitt said. "The whole-cell concept was a foreign language to the majority of the workers here and they thought it was never going to work. It's not perfect yet, but it is working and they're seeing the advantages."