WASHINGTON --- The Air Force logistics community is undertaking a campaign to modernize and fundamentally reshape its entire spare-parts process to better support expeditionary operations and to put more spares in the hands of maintainers.
"Through the decade of the 90s, the Air Force has seen its mission-capable rates and spares support decline," said Brig. Gen. Robert E. Mansfield Jr., director of the office of supply chain integration and logistics transformation at the Pentagon. "We simply didn't have enough spares to support our new expeditionary structure."
The reason is the Air Force's Cold War-based spares processes could not keep up with, let alone overcome, the force reductions, decreased budgets, aging aircraft and the increased operations tempo following Desert Storm, Mansfield said.
"We are serious about changing our outdated processes," he said. " We ask and rely on our people to keep our systems operational and mission capable; therefore, it is our duty and responsibility to get them the parts they need."
Before undertaking such a large effort, the Air Force gathered 71 military and civilian experts to determine the best course of action.
"We realized that we don't need a "throw-more-money-at-it" solution," Mansfield said. "First of all, we don't have a lot more money to throw, and realistically, we can't count on more money. The purpose of the spares campaign study was to review how we do business and then be smart about the changes we decide to make.
"We developed 20 initiatives that we thought would fundamentally transform and modernize our processes, allowing us to get more spares out the field," he said.
These initiatives are not just for aircraft but also for missile systems, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets and all of our capabilities that require spares, Mansfield said.
"Twenty initiatives were a lot," he said. "We looked at these and tried to narrow them down by determining which ones we can reasonably accomplish soon. We chose eight that, if we worked on full-time, we could get an initial operational capability from within this fiscal year.
The eight initiatives are:
--Restructure spares funding to set stable prices and allocate costs to the responsible commands; --Improve spares budgeting by establishing a single credible spare-requirement process for spares and consumable items, thereby meeting all spares requirements; --Improve financial management by tracking execution of weapon system support against approved requirements and budget. Simply put, determine whether the Air Force is getting a mission-capable rate equivalent to the amount it is spending; --Improve item demand and repair workload forecasting to better match field spares demand and repair capability. This includes a demonstration of commercial technologies like advanced planning and scheduling systems; --Establish a virtual single inventory control point for more consistent repair and purchase decision making; --Align supply-chain management to focus more on weapon systems and mission-capable rate goals; --Standardize and expand the role of regional supply squadrons to support expeditionary operations; and --Adopt improved purchasing and supply management practices, thereby reducing purchasing costs and improving product quality and delivery.
"Any one of these initiatives taken by themselves won't make a tremendous impact," Mansfield said. "But together, these initiatives will overhaul the entire spares process by getting spares into the hands of the maintainers and enabling the Air Force to improve weapon system support to meet current and future expeditionary requirements."
