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Quality Improvements in the Air Force
James Prentice
15 March 2015
Instructor: Manu Vora

The military and the Air Force have a long history of being more progressive in some of their practices than other government organizations, and quality management is no exception to this. After all it is in the best interest of both the military and the taxpayers that support them to perform their duties as efficiently, safely, and as inexpensively as possible. Bearing in mind two facts about quality management in the Air Force. The first being that the Air Force is a government entity and therefore will have directives on everything. In fact there is a directive advising how to go about ensuring quality is embedded in the everyday practices of the Air Force. Secondly, it should always be kept in mind that the Air Force is a big entity and as such is slow to react to advances that other types of organizations are quick to respond to. With this in mind the quality management methodologies employed by the Air Force are quickly catching up to the private sector in regards to complexity and effectiveness. Having entered the military in 2004 I have seen my fair share of quality management techniques employed by the Air Force; in fact by the time I had been in a while and had started to get a feel for how things worked I discovered that many middle management officers and enlisted had seen their fair share of quality management and were in a sense burned out with the half steps that were the result. According to LtCol Rinehart (Ret) “advocates for unreasonably applied reasonable ideas, to the point that they were eventually laughed out of professional military education courses” he further states “Airman snigger at anything that remotely resembles continuous improvement, rolling their eyes and declaring that it sounds like another quality thing” (Rinehart, 2006, p. 35). With this attitude throughout the force it would be easy to see that anything but a full effort on the part of upper leadership would lead to yet another half-step that accomplished little to nothing. Which is exactly what they did. With leadership behind it one hundred percent the Air Force initiated the AFSO21, Air Force Smart Operations 21. The AFSO21 was the punch that was needed to improve operations in the Air Force. Both of the programs work hand in hand to ensure that the Air Force is a working as efficiently as possible. The AFSO21 program is the first step in improving any process in the Air Force. According to Major Jennifer Walston “the methods that I found most used by industry were available in the AFSO21 playbook” (Walston, 2009, p. 162). Finding it difficult to take an off the shelf improvement strategy that would work for an organization as complex and vital as the Air Force was an impossible task. What the Air Force did instead was to build their own off of the techniques that were available and developed the AFSO21 program. According to Michael Marx “numerous other tools and methods make up the AFSO 21 Playbook – Value Stream Mapping, Constraint Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, Six Sigma/Statistical Analysis and Quality Function Deployment just to name just a few” (Marx, n.d.). In fact the Air Force went so far as to contract with the University of Tennessee and Mainstream GS LLC to provide training and contracting support for this initiative (Marx, n.d.). Needless to say the Air Force is committed to ensuring the success of the AFSO21 program. While the AFSO21 program is the methodology that is employed by the Air Force in order to improve quality it also allows freedom in how that is done. Having been in several process improvement workshops I can speak with personal experience about how the Air Force want to improve processes. In fact I have been involved with process improvement panels that the leader who has had “green belt” training. The process can be described as similar to the Six Sigma process. According to Kandis West “the training also teaches participants to effectively use tools like Six Sigma, a method to eliminate variation and standardize a process, and lean initiatives, which are designed to eliminate waste or non-value-added steps from a process” (West, n.d.). West goes on to say “the training emphasizes a data-driven approach to problem solving using several key concepts” (West, n.d.). While heavily influenced by Six Sigma it is not considered to be the Six Sigma process, but nonetheless has the same goal and affects. That doesn’t mean that the green belt training in the Air Force is easy or quick. In fact according to West “the training consist of 14 classes during a four-month period in which participants apply the skills they learned by working a real-world project in teams of four. The average project time is 40 to 50 hours outside the classroom in addition to regular duties” (West, n.d.). Not only does this show a large investment of both time and money on the part of senior leadership, but also a devotion of the people involved in the process itself. With such a large investment on the part of the people involved a failure to succeed would not be welcomed. One section of the Air Force that is throwing themselves into the AFSO21 program with more gusto that others is the Air Mobility Command. Being in charge of the larger logistical movements of people and equipment it is a fertile ground for finding low hanging fruit in regards to improvement in quality and reducing costs. According to Dunn, Walker, and Dryden “process improvement initiatives are underway at all air logistics centers” (Dunn, Walker, & Dryden, 2003, p. 6). In fact a lot of the Air Mobility Command centers are looking to manufactures to determine how their doing it. Dunn, Walker and Dryden state “the propulsion production division benchmarked with Pratt & Whitney to streamline the operation and discovered Pratt & Whitney accomplished the disassembly process using a cellular concept, while the Propulsion Production Division used batch” (Dunn, Walker, & Dryden, 2003, p. 6). This lead to a reduction in work in process by 30 percent and reduction in work time by 25 percent (Dunn, Walker, & Dryden, 2003, p. 7). In fact this process has led to improvement worthy of national recognition all the way back in 1992 when the Aeronautical Systems Division at Wright Patterson Air Force Base won the Quality Improvement Prototype award ("Five win federal quality award," 1992, p. 567). On top of only having certain processes looked at for improvements the Air Force also wants to promote an environment that supports efforts to improve processes through the IDEA program. Through the IDEA program the Air Force is promoting an environment that supports ways of improving processes. The IDEA program, or Innovative Development through Employee Awareness, that hopes to incentivize process improvement by paying the person who submitted the idea to reap in the reward of ten percent of the first years saving. Having been in place since 1995 this program has seen many improvements to processes. In fact according to Marleah Miller “for fiscal year 2009 show that there has been about 2,400 ideas approved” leading to “savings was $126 million and awards totaling $1.7 million were paid out to the individuals whose ideas were approved” (Miller, 2010). While all these programs are well and good. Without the proper tools to determine what can be improved and how to monitor once it has been improved to either further improve it will be for naught. Without the techniques to determine what should be improved and to see what about it needs to improved; quality improvement has little to no chance of improving. The notion of Statistical Process Control, SPC, has become such a big part of quality improvement in the Air Force that it is now a required class at the Air Force Institute of Technology for all undergraduate programs. This course according to Metscher and Collette includes “all topics are directly applicable to military management functions supporting base level operational units” (Metscher & Collette, 2003, p. 36). Furthermore, this class is considered so valuable to the Air Force that they have been offering an in house class at bases. When they do an class at a base instructors “solicit research topics from the group-level maintenance leaders” (Metscher & Collette, 2003, p. 36). One of the biggest concerns for any air force and the United States Air Force in particular is the “mission capable” status of their aircrafts. In one study conducted by a class in the field students were required to utilize statistical process control to determine what was causing an increase in the non-mission capable maintenance on a squadron of F-16’s. Using five years of data from the Wing’s Monthly Maintenance Summary the class was able to develop several control charts to find what could have been causing the increase.

Above are some examples of the results was able to acquire from their study. The conclusion that the class was able to arrive at was twofold the first being “Airframes are aging. This results in longer inspections and tougher repairs” secondly it was noted that “the look phase of the inspection process is and area to investigate further” (Metscher & Collette, 2003, p. 38). As a result of this study “the base analysis section conducted its own analysis to highlight areas driving the Non-Mission Capable Maintenance time. This is just one example of many that are conducted on a daily basis throughout the Air Force. It should be noted that every base has a number of base analysis sections that normally perform these analysis regularly. While the Air Force is a big lumbering monster sized organization that may take a long time to respond to changes in the quality improvement arena they have many advantages going for them. Firstly, they have a workforce that is both highly trained in their respective career fields and also quick to react when the order arrives to accomplish something. Being as big as it is though, the Air Force is fertile ground for quality improvement with many areas or sections having little to no attention devoted to it in regards to quality improvement. In particular I would like to point out that while the aircraft sortie generation is talked about and analyzed ad nauseam the support sections of the Air Force are given less attention and less time and money in order to accomplish this. Which in a period of reduction can be catastrophic if looked at from the standpoint of there being less people and processes that aren’t streamlined. The Air Force is quickly catching up to the private sector in their application and execution of quality improvement principles. While it has been a bumpy road with a lot of stop and starts the Air Force has definitely embraced quality improvement wholeheartedly. The Air Force is doing more today than they did twenty years ago with half the people. Keeping in mind that this has a lot to do with an adapt or die mentality the Air Force has a large incentive to continue on their path of improvement and in my experience is devoted to continuing to do so regardless of the amount of money appropriated.

References
Dunn, G., Walker, D. K., & Dryden, S. A. (2003). Workload and production. Air Force Journal of Logistics, 27(3), 6-8. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=c5fc2d05-f8a2-4bf6-ae07-5db51f11d4c3%40sessionmgr111&vid=10&hid=125
Five win federal quality award. (1992). Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 8(6), 567. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=17&sid=9570ea40-0a01-4c85-b022-ec7a530c3770%40sessionmgr112&hid=118&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLGNwaWQmY3VzdGlkPXM4ODU2ODk3JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=12785062
Marx, M. (n.d.). Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century – AFSO 21. Retrieved from http://www.isixsigma.com/community/blogs/air-force-smart-operations-21st-century-afso-21/
Metscher, D. S., & Collette, D. P. (2003). Air Force Institue of Technology. Air Force Journal of Logistics, 27(1), 36-40. Retrieved from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=2c8b77ec-f807-45d8-81bd-74c6d0c00e3c%40sessionmgr4002&hid=4212&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLGNwaWQmY3VzdGlkPXM4ODU2ODk3JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=10361354
Miller, M. (2010, January 7). IDEA program can pay off for both Air Force, Airmen. Retrieved from http://ww2.dcmilitary.com/stories/010710/aviator_28232.shtml
Rinehart, G. W. (2006). How the Air Force embraced "partial quality" (and avoiding similar mistakes in new endeavors). Air & Space Power Journal, 20(4), 34-43. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=9570ea40-0a01-4c85-b022-ec7a530c3770%40sessionmgr112&hid=118&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLGNwaWQmY3VzdGlkPXM4ODU2ODk3JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=24124846
Walston, J. G. (2009). Using AFSO 21. Air Force Journal of Logistics, 33(1), 162-169. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=9&sid=34952d12-4bf2-4bd9-ab6e-ccc73476e5ec%40sessionmgr114&hid=101&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLGNwaWQmY3VzdGlkPXM4ODU2ODk3JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=44058061
West, K. (n.d.). Air Force leaders get 'lean' with green belt training. Retrieved from http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/9926/air-force-lean-training

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