AFSO 21 breathes new life into old system

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Clark Staehle
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
A unit here on base has taken Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century and Lean processes to the next step by using it to reconfigure their operations.

The 100th Logistics Readiness Squadron has used the two processes to revamp and streamline the way its receiving shop does business.

Air Force senior leadership designed Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century to be not only a program that standardizes continuous improvements in processes across the service, but also describes a new way of thinking about the way the Air Force does business.

To kick off the process, the material maintenance flight began the process by assembling a team of functionals from the Traffic Management Office, Vehicle Operations and Supply. First, the team drafted a value-stream map.

A value-stream map is simply two step-by-step lists; one of the current process to be streamlined and another of process as it would run under perfect conditions with no limitations on manpower, money or space, said Senior Master Sgt. Jude Hebert, 100th Logistics Readiness Squadron material maintenance flight superintendent.

The current process was studied and non-value-added processes were identified. But is a non-value-added process?

"Think about a non-value-added process like going to the grocery store," said Capt. Troy Basnett, 100th LRS material maintenance flight chief. "When you're shopping, you put food in your cart. At the check-out line, you put food on the conveyor belt and the baggers bag it and put in their cart. Then you walk to your car with them and they take your groceries out of their cart and set them on the ground for you to pick up and put in your car. Putting the groceries on the ground instead of directly in the car is like a non-value-added process. It creates another step and it doesn't do anything to get you home any faster."

The material maintenance flight is responsible for receiving cargo from commercial shippers, processing and inventorying the cargo and finally distributing it to customers on base.

When the team first examined this shop, there were a lot of non-value-added processes, Sergeant Hebert said. The door to the facility, an old hangar, was broken. Drivers were dropping their truckloads on the pavement, in front of the door.

The Airmen would then move the cargo around to the back side of the building, where they would bring it back into the hangar's far side, the sergeant said. The cargo was placed in a queue with other pallets. Airmen had to wait for the shop's single forklift to become available to bring the entire pallet to the computer to be processed. The cargo was taken off the pallets piece by piece and then placed into hold areas to be delivered

Before, the facility had four delivery times a day, two for urgent packages and two for regular packages.

If a driver had an urgent run to Building 500, they would only take only take the one package instead taking all the packages that needed to go to Building 500, Sergeant Hebert said. This system meant that a package could conceivably sit in the warehouse for 18 hours before it was delivered. If the cargo was dropped off in the afternoon, sometimes it would sit in the warehouse waiting to be processed for the next morning's delivery.

Since the reorganization, the shop is running much more smoothly.

First, the broken door was permanently moved into the open position and an existing chain-link fence was used to secure the facility at night, Sergeant Hebert said. Now the commercial trucks delivering cargo can drive straight into the warehouse where the cargo is offloaded onto assembly line-type rollers. There, the packages can move down the line where they are processed more efficiently and quickly.

As soon as they reach the end of the line, the cargo is loaded onto delivery trucks.
Deliveries were increased to once an hour, Sergeant Hebert said. This gets the cargo to the customers much more quickly. Additionally, the more frequent deliveries mean smaller trucks can be used, saving the Air Force money in gas.

And the results of all this? Rearranging the office took just a couple of weeks and cost nothing. Additionally, the shop freed up manpower by cutting an Airman from its staff.

"We have more savings than cost, but we haven't spent a dime," Sergeant Hebert said. "(Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century) affects not only us, but how we service the customer and therefore the entire wing."