New FOD sweeper saves more than 13,000 work hours a year

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Eric Petosky
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Team Mildenhall will recoup more than 13,000 work hours this year thanks to an Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century suggestion to augment foreign object and debris searches with a FOD sweeping system. 

Previously, teams of 20 to 30 Airmen would take hours performing FOD walks on nine different areas of responsibility of the airfield. Now, it takes a single Airman driving a 24-foot wide FOD sweeper about two hours to complete the same circuit, including both taxiways and all vacant aircraft parking spots. 

"I pick up pebbles you would never pick up or even see during a FOD walk," said Master Sgt. James Rose, 100th Air Refueling Wing FOD and Dropped Object Prevention Program monitor. "During one sweep, I average around 50 pounds of rocks and 20 to 30 pieces of metal, like washers, screws, nuts and bolts." 

"What we did was examine how we were doing FOD walks to see if there was a way to still maintain a viable FOD program within Air Force guidelines, but reduce the manpower expense it was costing us," said Col. Michael Saville, 100th Maintenance Group commander. "We also looked at our track record on foreign object damage and discovered that it had been over 10 years since our last incident caused by FOD on the taxiways. That incident was actually caused by the jet blast from a taxiing aircraft near a construction site where a stone was kicked up and struck a vehicle windshield." 

Unlike wings with a centralized consolidated aircraft parking ramp, RAF Mildenhall is made up of smaller individual parking spots, or hardstands, connected by 1.6 miles of taxiway. This is where the 13,000 work hour savings came from -- that was the calculated manpower cost for Airmen to conduct FOD walks along this taxiway area that connects the hardstands. 

"We ended up purchasing three FOD sweepers," Colonel Saville said, "and we are substituting these FOD sweepers for the FOD walks of the taxiway only. We still conduct actual FOD walks on the aircraft parking spots prior to an aircraft launch and before an aircraft return." 

In addition, Airmen use the FOD sweepers at least three times a week along the entire length of the taxiway which allows aircraft maintainers to return to the flight line and the maintenance back shops where they are needed to support the daily flying mission. 

"We still maintain a very visible and viable FOD program," Colonel Saville said. "Preventing foreign object damage is basic maintenance 101 -- we just employed a technological solution to replace the Airmen doing this. Unlike the human element, the best part of the FOD sweeper is that it doesn't discriminate what it picks up. The FOD sweeper picks up the smallest stones or foreign objects that an Airman might overlook. We are actually picking up more FOD from our taxiways now than we ever did by doing FOD walks." 

Despite the eventual success of the FOD sweeper, when the suggestion was made, there was some apprehension, according to Sergeant Rose. The FOD sweepers were put on trial for a month and the results spoke volumes. 

"I never thought it would work," he said. "I was amazed. We showed the results to the wing commander, and she fully funded the program." 

Since the approval, Sergeant Rose has shown how the FOD sweeper works to other commanders, including Maj. Gen. Marc Rogers, United States Air Forces in Europe commander. 

"General Rogers came out to watch, and so I threw a bunch of pebbles and stuff on the taxiway to demonstrate," Sergeant Rose said. "But the truck wouldn't start. I decided to manually pull the sweeper, and it still picked everything up. It was amazing." 

This AFSO21 event is just one success story in an effort to initiate a culture of change across the Air Force. 

"We are always looking for process improvements and ways to become more efficient," Colonel Saville said, "particularly as personnel and resources become more constrained. Hopefully, when Airmen see the kind of actual savings that can come from good ideas such as the FOD sweepers, they will see how it allows them to be more time efficient in their jobs and will instill a culture of continuous process improvement within our organizations."