TINKER AIR FORCE BASE -- Soon, maintenance workers in the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex will have a new process to get the bench stock material they need to do their job. As GEN II contract comes to a close, it’s time for a new type of contract. The new contract will allow the Air Force to control cost and monitor material that is actually used by maintenance.
Some maintenance shops at Tinker already have the automated vending machines that are being implemented as part of the Industrial Product Support Vendor contract. The contract, which is entering the third generation, is due to be awarded next April for an estimated 10 years.
“People are going to be upset until they get used to it, but it is a change in culture — a new way of doing things,” said Tammy Woodall, a management analyst with the OC-ALC Business Operations Office and IPV complex lead. “Maintainers will still be able to get the parts they need. We’ll just be getting rid of the open bins and place material in AutoCrib machines. For those parts no longer meeting the GEN III business rules, they will need to be ordered through the planner.”
Ms. Woodall said streamlining bench stock materials — or the low cost, higher demand items — will increase accountability. “With the new AutoCrib, we will be able to provide more accurate data of materials used,” she added.
Force won’t be paying for material it doesn’t need. According to Ms. Woodall, the Defense Logistics Agency will give money back to the Air Force — close to $700,000 comes back to Tinker.
Ms. Woodall said under the new set of rules, the complex must have four demands on material over a 12-month period, the part has to be an active DLA national stock number and the unit of issue of each may not exceed $250. Also, the Air Force planner will no longer have the option to do a spot buy. GEN III will not permit the Air Force to buy material not on the schedule of items, meaning supply orders will need to go through the planning office for production support technicians to order.
According to Ms. Woodall, using the new common access card automated bench stock machines will provide better demand data. GEN III contract will have tighter metrics for contractor performance. The AutoCribs will track when the contractor fails to provide the part that the mechanic needs, when he needs, and how many he needs. “When the mechanic fails to get his parts every time, we will have the ability, with actual data, to reflect the correct Contract Performance Assessment Reporting rating,” Ms. Woodall said.
“The new automated machines will cut down on grazing in open bin systems of the past, while providing better data,” she said.
“We have to be in compliance with the Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness and show demand data,” she said. “Especially in this time of so many budget cuts — there is no open checkbook for the Air Force to stock material that has no demands. Maintenance will still be able to get their material, but in a different way.”
Over the next year, 65,000 NSNs, across the enterprise, will be ruled out. At the top end of GEN II, according to Ms. Woodall, there were 108,000 NSNs being supported.
“Though many have been deleted, we need to get down to 45,000 NSNs,” she said. “That’s more than a 50 percent cut in the complex, with Tinker shouldering the burden but still supporting over 22,000 NSNs.
“This is big,” said Ms. Woodall. “For the past 10 years the Air Force has held on to excess quantities of materials. We are not getting rid of anything during the right sizing effort process; we are moving it to a virtual crib to support maintenance during transition. Red or blue dots provide a visual for the mechanics so they know to go to their planners to order material. When they see these dots they can still use what is there, but once the location is empty, there will be a new way of ordering the material from that point on.”
In getting ready for the transition, a massive project of pairing down the materials is necessary to alleviate the need to keep counting materials.
“Instead of Tinker right-sizing every bin, we decided to inactivate a lot of bins so we don’t keep ordering items we don’t need. Our first priority was to right-size the bins that did not make GEN III. In order for them to make the final GEN III list, we needed actual data and we need the data by October,” Ms. Woodall said.
Ms. Woodall likens the transition to a complicated game of chess, and people move forward with the least amount of hiccups and loss.
“Tinker DLA works so well with our representatives,” said Ms. Woodall. “We all work as a team here.”
Reserve materials, currently managed by Lockheed Martin, will be going away with the new contract. “We will continue to support the maintainer. The changes may seem like we are not supporting maintenance or trying to make their life more difficult, but moving forward it will be a different way of supporting. We will always have the ability to add to GEN III contracts, but we must follow the business rules before items are added back to contract.
Over the past 10 years, GEN II had no business rules on an estimated $1.5 billion contract. The current contractor supported our requests no matter the cost. This is something we must have better control over to be FIAR compliant. DLA is currently about 95 percent supportable on all items no longer on GEN III. The Air Force will always have the ability to order through DLA,” said Ms. Woodall.
She added that Tinker is the only complex with the auto cribs already in place, so the transition should be quicker and easier. Currently, our GEN II material is being supported under a bridge contract, which is nothing more than an extension of GEN II.
“Because we are being supported under the bridge, we are required to submit to DLA-Troop Support a roll out request for our MXSG team to begin changing our open bins to automated machines,” said Ms. Woodall. “We have submitted the request, for in KC-135 dock 7, to start the transition plus an additional four bench stock locations across all groups. The roll out plan for all bench stock locations is a five year transition process. Tinker currently supports about 280 plus BSLs, with over 90,000 bins.”
Maintenance will see many changes, but the changes will be good. There will not only be more data, but better data to predict what maintenance actually needs, the number of parts they need and how often they need the parts.
“We will be holding the contractor accountable, with stricter metrics for empty bins, mechanic wait times, first pass acceptance of which all affect maintenance turn time or flow days,” said Ms. Woodall. “Our maintainers are here to do a job and benchstock is a huge part of their success. Without benchstock material readily available to them does affect their ability to complete their job. Our job here supports the military around the globe and our maintainers take pride in supporting our warfighter’s needs.”