'It's working' MXW commander applauds OC-ALC for process improvement efforts Published Feb. 26, 2010 By Marti D. Ribeiro Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center Mission Control Center TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- "Process improvement efforts by the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center are working," said. Brig. Gen. Bruce Litchfield, 76th Maintenance Wing Commander. "The process improvement plan across the ALC is showing big results that are directly contributing to warfighter readiness." The maintenance wing commander is referring to the ALC's efforts to streamline processes and make production more efficient. Using methodologies like Lean, Six Sigma and Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century, members are improving the way Tinker does business on a daily basis. "How do I know its working?" he said. "Our number of days for returning aircraft back to their home station has decreased and we're doing work faster, with better quality and less re-work." The ALC has seen a 30 percent improvement in KC-135 flow days for aircraft that have typically had the most repair challenges. Flow days are the number of days an aircraft is at the ALC for programmed depot maintenance. "By any measure, 30 percent is a huge improvement," he said. "It's an especially spectacular return on investment in transformation." But according to the general, it's not just the efforts from the maintenance wing that are driving this success. He credits the "Total Center" effort to eliminate constraints that have been plaguing the ALC employees and preventing them from meeting the Center's potential. The efforts across the Center have focused on processes, materiel support, requirements, engineering, manpower, and tools... just to name a few. "The leading edge came with the creation of the cross-functional constraint-buster team," General Litchfield said. "Their entire focus is to remove the constraints that prevent the aircraft from getting out the door." He also attributes the Center's success to the alignment across the ALC on the major transformation goals, the enterprise approach to include all major disciplines and the focused process improvement approach that uses hard data to target important events that provide the biggest gains. "It's an exciting time to work at Tinker," he said. The General feels we've only seen the "tip of the iceberg" in terms of the full production capability that will expand to all weapons systems. "The most exciting part is the workforce is beginning to see results and has bought into the process improvement efforts as a means of becoming a world-class organization." However, the continual success at Tinker depends upon the ability to overcome future challenges and sustain past and current improvement efforts. One of the challenges the ALC faces is the limiting constraints that are beyond their control, like materiel supportability. "We have to improve the integration activities across many organizations," he said. "We need to get better at synchronizing operations because management becomes harder and harder the faster you produce." Becoming faster and more efficient has its own set of challenges. When we focus on improving major processes and speeding up cycle time, some processes that were not part of the initial effort can lag behind. For example, a process that wasn't an issue previously could suddenly pop up as the limiting constraint. "It's something we are happily learning to deal with on a weekly basis." "The end goal is to improve readiness of our Air Force by becoming faster and more efficient," General Litchfield said. In essence, it's providing more warfighting capabilities at the same cost. "Regardless of where you are at the Center, everyone knows that it is about delivering capability to the men and women who are keeping our nation safe." Ms. Ribeiro is a contractor with ICF International.