Center leans PDM scheduling

Published Feb. 26, 2010
By Howdy Stout
Tinker Public Affairs

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- The average person can plan weeks and months ahead of time, but imagine planning for parts and procedures for an aircraft up to three years before it arrives at the maintenance facility.

This is exactly what the aircraft experts in the 327th Aircraft Sustainment Wing do for the B-1, B-52, E-3 and KC-135 systems. Because of the defense funding process, the 327th must plan three years in advance for the parts and procedures that 76th Maintenance Wing will need to repair the aircraft when it arrives for Programmed Depot Maintenance (PDM) at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center.

Planning for what you need, three years from now, is very difficult and can result in parts not being available when the aircraft arrives for PDM. When there are no parts, the aircraft has to wait and can't return to the warfighter as quickly.

The OC-ALC team identified this as a growing problem and decided to utilize Lean tools to identify the root causes and to streamline the process and eliminate waste and rework. The aircraft and maintenance experts from the 327th and 76th along with members from the supply chain, the Defense Logistics Agency and Air Force Global Logistics Support Center, met a few weeks ago to map the entire PDM requirements process for each weapon system. Mapping the process enabled them to identify the value and non-value added steps and to learn each player's role in the overall process.

"We're doing a value stream analysis (VSA)," said Brian Defonteny, lead facilitator for the week-long event. "We're not trying to fix anything this week. We're trying to find opportunities for improvement." A VSA puts on paper a process from beginning to end, enabling a team to identify opportunities for improvement.

"And those opportunities are what we're going to prioritize and tackle," said Dewayne Jones, event team leader.

The top issues raised by this VSA were the challenges the weapons systems face when collaborating between a variety of separate organizations and identifying the requirements for each process. The VSA also highlighted that the lack of joint planning increases the amount of work that has to be re-accomplished due to quality defects and incorrect requirement statements.

"Teamwork between the different organizations is essential to tackle an issue of this magnitude," said OC-ALC commander Major Gen. David Gillett, who participated in the event's final outbriefing.

According to the general, DLA and AFGLSC will soon begin reviewing their own internal processes in a joint effort to streamline how parts are ordered and supplied.

"It is an issue facing not just Tinker but other Air Force ALCs," he said. "We have the most complicated supply chain you can imagine, but that doesn't mean we can't tackle improvements across all agencies. Business rules can be changed."

Although the requirements processes are similar for each weapons system, often involving more than a 130 different steps, there isn't a standard methodology for this process across the Center. For example, the B-1 requirements' process is the only automated process. This gives the B-1 program an edge in better collaboration while other weapon systems rely on phone calls and emails to track status.

The VSA not only identified opportunities for standardizing work across the Center, but it also allowed the team to recognize areas which could be streamlined by utilizing another Lean tool, the rapid improvement event (RIE).

"A VSA is exploratory surgery," Mr. Defonteny said of the event. "We open up the process to see what's wrong; then, we schedule the specific surgery needed."

RIEs are week-long events used to tackle the individual process improvement opportunities by utilizing the 8-step problem solving method to identify the true root cause to a specific problem. The team can then develop counter measures for that specific problem and improve the entire process.

"The teams identified more than 100 improvement opportunities in each weapon systems' value stream map," Mr. Jones said. "As a group, we combined those opportunities into 15 (improvement opportunities) that may lead to future RIEs and 18 'just go do its.'"

Some participants in the VSA admitted that at the beginning of the week they were less than enthusiastic about the event. But, by the end, participants said the week-long exercise was very beneficial. Tackling the problem this way enabled them to see the entire process and that each of the weapons systems faced similar problems. Most importantly, they were able to identify a lot of waste in the process and recognized that by getting rid of the waste they could improve their daily work life and get aircraft back to the warfighter faster.

"I walked into this one quite negative," said Rick Opat, team leader from the 552nd Aircraft Sustainment Squadron. "This is the fifth Lean event I've participated in the last year. But, unlike some previous events, we had all of the right players in the room and that made all the difference."

"One of the biggest benefits was bringing four PDM processes into the same room at the same time - something that hasn't been done before." said Col. Mark Beierle, 327th Aircraft Sustainment Wing commander. "This is huge in terms of its implications. "If we can do these (requirements) better, we can put more aircraft through the PDM more efficiently."

"This is a pivotal event," General Gillett said. "All of the work that follows means success or failure. It gives us direction, and it's important because it will help our Air Force deliver airpower."