Thanks to teamwork,Tinker manning has rapid growth

Published Sept. 18, 2009
By Brandice J. Armstrong
Tinker Public Affairs

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center leadership tasked its personnel in July with a lofty assignment: hire 400 new maintenance employees by Oct. 14. With less than a month until the deadline, personnel have made significant strides and credit their success to teamwork.

To ensure hiring objectives were met, a "Red Team" was formed, led by Sharon Blindauer, of the OC-ALC Director of Personnel office. She spearheaded the effort and worked with the 76th Maintenance Wing and 72nd Air Base Wing to achieve the goal. To date, approximately 39 percent of these employees have been hired, 61 percent are in the pre-employment process and the average number of flow days it takes to hire a new employee has decreased by about 50 percent.

"By working together and synchronizing activities across multiple organizations, we can now increase manning to match workload requirements," said Brig. Gen. Bruce Litchfield, 76th Maintenance Wing commander. "It will save the Air Force a great deal of money by doing the work organically and increase the operational capability of the weapon systems we support. No matter how you look at this effort, it's a huge victory all around."

The 72nd ABW provides the personnel for pre-employment services. The Red Team, a group of 20 individuals from several installation units including the OC-ALC, 72nd Force Support Squadron and 76th MXW, meets weekly to brainstorm solutions to current problems.

"The entire process has lived up to the slogan, 'one team, one fight,'" said Daniel Bell, 72nd FSS director who oversaw the recruiting and staffing office, new employee orientation and manpower office.

William Swigert, OC-ALC director of Personnel, agreed.

"My staff's role is to challenge the current way of doing business and shepherd the improvement process leading to reduced flow time," Mr. Swigert said. "The air base wing is a big player. They changed their processes to accommodate the maintenance wing. There are heroes in this whole thing, such as the members of support services that helped us hire 80 people a week."

The need to hire a significant number of new maintenance wing personnel came about at the annual workload review. Held in early spring, 76th MXW staffers reviewed the workload for the remainder of the fiscal year, as well as what was expected for the next two years.

"As we got closer to June and July, we started seeing that FY10 workload was growing by approximately 1 million production hours, driving an additional manpower requirement of 1,000," said Renee Huddleston, 76th MXW chief of Management Operations.

"When the need for 1,000 more employees became apparent, we quickly learned that the current hiring process was not structured to support the demand and we needed a change," Ms. Huddleston said. "The efforts of personnel -- from the OC-ALC Directorate of Personnel, 76th MXW, 72nd Medical Group, 72nd Security Forces Squadron, 72nd Communications Squadron and training organizations from both the 76th MXW and 72nd ABW - ensured positive changes in the hiring process reducing the number of days it takes to get a new employee on board."

The team succeeded in changing the process and flow days were reduced. Civilian personnel's current 71-day average for an individual to complete the hiring process and start work clearly demonstrates the team effort, said Donna Zawisza, 72nd FSS chief of Staffing.

"We're doing this to support the warfighter," Ms. Huddleston said. "We're making sure those people who put their life on the line every day get the engines, aircraft and commodities they need to perform those missions out in the field.

"As workload increases at Tinker and we become more and more the repair source of choice," Ms. Huddleston said, "we need to ensure we have a system in place to respond to those increasing manpower requirements."

Officials advertised the vacancies through www.USAJobs.com and notified three local vocational schools - Metro Technology Centers, Gordon Cooper Vocational Technical School and Canadian Valley Technology Center. There was interest in the positions from across the United States, Ms. Zawisza said.