New process helps team meet demand Published Sept. 13, 2007 By Kandis West 72nd Air Base Wing Public Affairs TINKER AIR FORCE BASE -- It's no secret that the 51 year-old KC-135 Stratotanker is essential to the nation's warfighting capabilities. The aircraft has a fuel capacity of more than 30,000 gallons, which is enough to drive a car almost a million miles. Despite its age, this aircraft is still in high demand. The Tinker Team Spirit program, managed by the 564th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, has implemented a process to better meet those demands. The program reduces the number of aircraft inspection days required at the home station allowing the aircraft to be added to flying schedule much sooner. According to Dan Mooney, 564th AMXS director, this process ensures quicker availability of aircraft and less maintenance downtime at the home station. After an aircraft completes the programmed depot maintenance at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, it returns to the home station and is disassembled for an Acceptance Inspection by the owning unit's inspection team. The old process took an average of 52 days to complete. If there where any defects the owning unit would submit a Quality Deficiency Report to Tinker or the contractor within 45 days. Completely stripping down and inspecting an aircraft is a cumbersome process and is a very time consuming task according to Douglas Barnes, 564th AMXS Team Spirit program manager. Aircraft are subject to being delivered with the same type defects because of the 45 day lapse for reporting deficiencies. "Allowing our customers to come in and inspect their aircraft at Tinker this has eliminated the problem," Mr. Barnes said. The Air National Guard owning units have revamped their inspection check lists and processes by conducting 80 percent of their acceptance inspection at Tinker. This reduced inspection times at home station from an average of 52 days to 14. "That was 52 days that our customers were unable to fly their aircraft after they were produced by the depot," Mr. Mooney said. After 90 percent of the programmed depot maintenance work is completed at Tinker, the customer sends a group of specialized field technicians to inspect their aircraft at Tinker's Team Spirit PDM depot facility. The team is able to operate all systems and all areas are left accessible for inspection. The team inspects the aircraft, documents all defects, and reports the defects to the KC-135 production line. The depot reviews the defects, immediately implements corrective action plans, and performs root cause analysis of the defects as required. These defects are addressed and corrected on the spot. Mr. Mooney said this allows the customer to inspect the quality of their work prior to the aircraft departing Tinker and it helps build customer confidence. Since about 80 percent of the acceptance inspection is performed at the depot site, there is no need to completely disassemble the aircraft at the home station. The customer spends the other 20 percent or about 14 days working field-level maintenance that the depot is not contracted to perform. Mr. Mooney said this program has improved communication and the quality of customer service. When visiting units arrive, they are given a tour of PDM facilities, and provided a comprehensive overview of the PDM work performed on their aircraft. Now that the customer better understands the work accomplished, they have a higher level of confidence in the quality of the product that is produced, Mr. Mooney said. In a recent feedback message from Master Sgt. Thomas E Conolly, an Air National Guard 185th Air Refueling Wing Quality Assurance inspector from Sioux City, Iowa, he said the approach to on-site observation is nothing short of revolutionary. It encourages teamwork between the owning units and the PDM sites rather than the adversarial relationships that have been present in the past. He said if the desire is to deliver quality aircraft that are ready to fly and fight in minimum time, thus enhancing the warfighters capability, then this type of evaluation is the way to achieve it. While customer confidence levels have increased, the number of defects has decreased by nearly 60 percent. In 2005, before this program's inception at Tinker, the average number of accepted defects per aircraft was 1.68, nearly two defects per aircraft. In 2007 it is 0.7 defects, which is less than one per aircraft. From October 2007 until now, 29 of 36 aircraft had no critical or major defects, up from the 15 in the previous year. The squadron director said they plan to improve the program in the upcoming years by reducing the inspection downtime to zero. "The goal of the program is to provide an aircraft that the customer is confident enough in that they can fly their mission requirements as they depart the depot," Mr. Mooney said. The squadron is getting closer to reaching that goal, said Steve Stoner, 564th AMXS Production Flight chief. This past June, the Milwaukee Air National Guard completed an acceptance inspection here at Tinker and considered the aircraft mission ready upon departure from the Depot. The only missing piece to the puzzle is providing field level maintenance requirements such as engine and auxiliary power unit maintenance inspections at the depot, the program manager said. Mr. Mooney said in 2009, the Air National Guard may contract the depot to perform the inspection on the engines and APU during PDM. This will allow the program to reach the goal of obtaining 100 percent mission ready aircraft without any inspection downtime at the home station. The Team Spirit program began in 2000 as a simple request from the Air National Guard to look at the Tankers before they depart the PDM facilities. In April 2006, the Tinker team signed a memorandum of agreement with their KC-135 customers for the program. Tinker Team Spirit hopes to institutionalize the program as an AFMC standard. The Ogden Air Logistics Center at Hill AFB, Utah, and the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center at Robins AFB, Ga., benchmarked Tinker's Team Spirit program for adoption at their depots in February and March 2007. The Boeing Company and PEMCO Aviation Group, also participate in Operation Team Spirit. The Tinker Team Spirit Program was nominated to compete for the Chief of Staff Team Excellence Award. There are 22 teams competing for the award. The award recognizes teams that used a systematic approach to enhance mission capability, improve operational performance, and create sustained results. Last year, improvements made by the five award-winning teams and 15 other award nominees were expected to save the Air Force about $620 million in the first year, officials said. Five teams will be selected for this year's award on Sept. 24.