Team gets green light for high velocity Published April 24, 2009 By Howdy Stout TInker Public Affairs TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla., -- A team of high-level Air Force officials gave the go-ahead last week for work to proceed on the High Velocity Maintenance program for the B-1B Lancer strategic bomber. Consisting of officials from Air Force Materiel Command, Air Combat Command and the Air Staff, the "red team" visited Tinker last week to review the HVM program. The program is designed to reduce unscheduled maintenance at both the depot and field level by reorganizing the maintenance done, reducing the interval between scheduled maintenance and boosting the amount of man-hours worked during maintenance. "We have permission to work HVM," explained Maj. Rich Buckley, HVM Team leader. "The next step is laying out a detailed schedule." That schedule involves defining the processes involved with HVM and working with stakeholders in the B-1 maintenance process, both in the field and at the depot. Once the processes are in place, the program could be implemented as soon as next year. "The goals of the schedule are to validate the processes in the spring of 2010 and transition to full execution by October 2010," Major Buckley said. The program for the B-1 is based in part on a maintenance program developed for the C-130 Hercules, a high-demand aircraft that suffered from excessive downtime in recent years. By reducing the intervals between depot and field-level maintenance, service to problem items or potentially problem areas can be identified ahead of time and scheduled into maintenance work. By reducing the uncertainty in aircraft maintenance, the HVM team hopes to boost the number of aircraft available for operations. Last year, more than half the B-1 fleet was in some form of maintenance. "It's fundamentally based on the ability to make more aircraft available to fly sorties," Major Buckley said. Although HVM represents a drastic change in how maintenance is done on the B-1, it has widespread support from maintenance crews and depot maintenance personnel. "The senior NCOs are behind this and have also suggested a number of ideas on how to implement changes on the flight line, in the depot and in the field to improve aircraft availability," explained Sam Malone, deputy director of the 427th Aircraft Sustainment Group. "They see this will be a great opportunity to meet field maintenance requirements." "They understand [the current system] , what the flaws are, and what can be done to make things better" agreed Major Buckley. Mr. Malone said the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center is also enthusiastic about the change and have provided much support in the run-up to the team's visit. Issues to be resolved during the scheduling phase include IT support in tracking the relative "health" and maintenance scheduling of each aircraft in the B-1 fleet. At the moment, there is no single source of information on the maintenance state of each aircraft as both the depot and field manage information differently. "The IT solution is definitely the long pole in the tent," Major Buckley said. Also, the Air Force will need to decide how funding for approved modifications to the aircraft will be carried out and at what point they will be accomplished under the new HVM maintenance cycles. The program may initially incur costs to implement but should ultimately prove a savings once it reaches maturity, Mr. Malone said. Major Buckley said the advantage of HVM is that the potential for improvement is not dependent on using high-risk technology, but simply in changing the way things are done. "This is a paradigm shift in how we do business here," he said. The team is expected to assess the program again early next year. In the meantime, a steering group representing the Red Team will continue to oversee HVM development. Despite the relatively tight timeline for work on HVM, both Major Buckley and Mr. Malone are confident HVM will succeed, especially as it has widespread support. "It's absolutely worth doing and it's something everyone is excited about doing," Major Buckley said. "And it's definitely executable."