More than one-third of a system's life-cycle cost is maintenance. AFLC aimsto get that job done better, cheaper, ·and faster.

o1i'">""'>.0o:g0..iiiI

Squeezing AforeFromtheLogistics DollarTHE C-141 StarLifter's second-

ary exhaust nozzle is a majorAir Force logistics headache. Thiscrucial part is based on twenty-five-year-old technology, and its highrate of corrosion and cracking givesit the dubious honor of being the topconsumer of maintenance man-hours on the C-141's TF33-P-7A en-gine.

When the nozzles cannot be re-paired in the field, they are sent toWarner Robins Air Logistics Cen-ter, Ga. Crews there will fix eighty-two nozzles this year, at an averagecost of $37,415each. That comes to$3million, so it is not surprising thatWarner Robins has been seeking along-term solution to the problem.

In October 1987, officials dis-played the cantankerous nozzle at atechnology fair. An enterprisingcontractor seeking new businesssaid that, with modern materialsand manufacturing processes, hecould build one ten times more reli-able. A development contract waslet. Now USAF is anticipating theday a decade hence when eachC-141 will be fitted with highly reli-able secondary exhaust nozzles.

"It'll take us a while, but with this

30

[new nozzle] we're going to fix along-standing problem," WarnerRobins Commander Maj. Gen. DickGillis told an AFA acquisition andlogistics symposium held last Aprilin Arlington, Va.

BY PETER GRIER

Lower Cost, HigherSophistication

This change in nozzles exempli-fies many of the actions that AirForce leaders at the symposiumsaid they must take to squeeze morereturn out of logistics dollars inyears ahead. USAF's logistics infra-structure will have to become moreinnovative and responsive in theway it does business, maintainedGen. Alfred G. Hansen, Command-er of Air Force Logistics Command(AFLC). USAF technology fairs,such as the one that sparked thenozzle contract, are an attempt tomanage better and generate ideas atlower cost.

In addition, the General asserts,Air Force logistics will have to be-come more technically sophisti-cated. State-of-the-art materials andprocesses must be adapted to sup-port today's weapon systems. In thefuture, reliability and ease of main-

AFLC is implementingnew programs to get the

most from every avail-able asset. Efficiency, re-sponsiveness, and long-term sustainability cost

savings have al/ beenboosted. Here, mainte-nance personnel fromthe 410th Bomb Wing,

K. I. Sawyer AFB, Mich.,spend a Saturday after-noon squeezing a littlemore from a wing B-52.

AIR FORCE Magazine / August 1989

tenance must be designed into newsystems from the outset.

"We have had to take a deep lookat ourselves and those things thatcould be better organized and moreefficient," claims General Hansen,"because we recognized that budgetfunding had gone down and wasgoing to continue to go down."

One of the AFLC Commander'sprime goals at the outset of 1989wasto make his commanq pay more at-tention to customers. TraditionallyAFLC had not seemed particularlyuser-friendly, believing that its rolewas merely to keep spare-parts binsfull. Thinking of Strategic Air Com-mand, Tactical Air Command, andother users as "customers" in thecommercial sense may have beensomething of a cognitive leap.

Quality is another area of empha-sis. General Hansen says AFLC isembracing the Zen-like approach toquality control that Ford Motor Co.and other US corporations haveused to help turn their businessesaround. AFLC production workersnow have a Quality Bill of Rightsthat permits them to challenge"business as usual" and to place thepursuit of quality above production.

This is not just window-dressing.Already, three AFLC workers havebeen able to shut down productionlines because they were seeingproducts of dubious quality. What'smore, claims General Hansen, "wemade those three people heroes."

Competitive Contract ChangesCongressionally mandated chang-

es in procurement are altering theway AFLC does business. A case inpoint is AFLC's attempt to increaseuse of competitive contracts. Overthe last decade, AFLC use of com-petition has approximately dou-bled.

At Warner Robins, competitivecontracting has increased by fifteenpercent during the past year, saysGeneral Gillis. Today, some forty'percent of dollars spent annually bythe Center are let in competitivecontracts. The overall figure re-mains lower than it might otherwisebe, says General Gillis, becausemuch of the electronic warfareequipment he needs is so complexthat it can be bought from only onecontractor.

Changes in USAF force structurehave brought about dramatic plan-

32

ning problems. Only a few yearsago, AFLC was expecting to sup-port forty tactical fighter wings;then the figure was lowered tothirty-seven; then it dropped'again,to thirty-five. This has led to partsbeing bought to support planes thatwon't arrive.

"I have got one hell of a problemtrying to plan logistics support for aphantom outfit that is here todayand gone tomorrow," says GeneralHansen.

Cuts in AFLC's own budget causegreatest concern. No longer canAFLC count on purchasing largequantities of parts to ease supplyproblems. Parts availability peakedin 1987 and has been sliding down-hill since. In gen,eral, AFLC is buy-ing only peacetime spares. War re-serve materiel isn't getting funded.

"If we don't have those massivepiles of spares, we have to look inother areas to make sure there iscombat capability," says GeneralHansen.

For logisticians, USAF officialsmaintain, smarter acquisition prac-tices will become critical. The caseof the C-141 nozzle was one exam-ple cited by General Gillis of ac-quisitions that could help ease logis-tics tasks. Among others:

• A new 60,000-pound loader.This vehicle and 25,OOO-poundand40,000-pound variants are crucialtools for Military Airlift Command.In days gone by, they were pur-chased from the lowest bidder, peri-od. But the smaller models have notlived up to expectations, so AFLCis taking a new approach for the60,000-pound loader. In September,two contractors will be picked tobuild two prototype loaders apiece.MAC will test them to see whichversion it prefers. Once a winner ispicked, a second competition willbe held, this one for a contractor toproduce the winning design.

"This is a long-term operation,"notes General Gillis, "but we'regoing to get a loader that is work-able, and with a mean time betweenfailures so far in excess of what wehave that MAC is going to have awarfighting weapon."

• LANTIRN. The Low-AltitudeNavigation and Targeting Infraredfor Night pod system will be re-paired and maintained in a new, pa-perless automated depot. When thedepot is complete, Robins will have

in-house capability for fixing some300 repairable pod parts.

LANTIRN tech data will be dig-itized on a computer database.Training will be done by video. Ma-terial handling and storage will beautomated. The depot computerwill track individual parts by serialnumber and will collect failure datafrom the field.

"We will virtually eliminate all pa-per associated with the LANTIRNproject," says General Gillis.

Modernizing Management ToolsAcquisition strategies aren't the

only means being studied by AFLCto wring more logistics out of thebudget. General Hansen listed threeother primary changes that he ispursuing at AFLC: improving effi-ciency of the logistics infrastruc-ture, improving responsiveness, andcutting costs of longer-term sus-tainability.

Modernization of AFLC manage-ment tools is viewed as a key meansfor improving the command's effi-ciency, according to General Han-sen. Currently, AFLC is developingperhaps the largest military supportdata system in the world, with ninecore systems that will each contain3,000,000 to 4,000,000 lines of soft-ware code.

In the stock control and distribu-tion data system, for instance, apart-tracking task that previouslymight have taken seventy-two hourswill take perhaps as little as twelveseconds. "We can tell a director ofmaintenance somewhere whetheror not that part is going to arrive, atwhat hour, and what the mode oftransportation is," says GeneralHansen.

AFLC is studying automatedwarehousing systems for its $28 bil-lion inventory and is restructuringinventories where possible to achieveJapanese-style "just-in-time" deliv-eries. It has set up a joint workingteam with AFSC to study ways ofgetting new weapon systems offcontractor support and into full in-house depot maintenance as fast aspossible.

A final efficiency change is a de-ceptively simple one: AFLC isfocusing its repair operations onproblems that can actually groundan airplane, rather than trying to fixabsolutely every problem, large orsmall. Setting priorities in this man-

AIR FORCE Magazine / August 1989

ner, notes General Hansen, has al-ready increased the mission-capa-ble rate of the F-16 fleet by eightpercent.

Restructuring AFLCTo help make the AFLC bureau-

cracy more responsive to user prob-lems, General Hansen has restruc-tured large portions of his sprawlingcommand, moving 18,000 workersto different slots.

A large part of this change re-volves around an increase in thepower of the AFLC system programmanager. In the past, system pro-gram managers were figureheads,says General Hansen, with fewworkers and small budgets undertheir direct control.

nization focuses on logistics forspace. In the past, most space sys-tem support has been carried out bycontractors and has been marked bymiscommunication and Air Forceloss of control over system configu-ration. The Air Force is now movingto "normalize" space logistics, inGeneral Hansen's phrase, and willput space support under AFLC'spurview.

One result is the appearance of abudding AFLC space depot in Colo-rado Springs. Plans call for the de-pot, which employs 330 workers to-day, to grow to 1,200 workers overthe next five years. It will have totalresponsibility for supporting NOR-AD's Cheyenne Mountain Complexand is planning to bring satellites

A final efficiency change isdeceptively simple: AFLC is focusingits repair operations on problems thatcan actually ground an airplane,rather than trying to fix absolutelyevery problem, large or small.

Now item managers and buyershave been placed under the systemmanager's authority. "For the firsttime, we have the people who aremaking the requirements and thepeople who are buying the thingstalking together," says GeneralHansen. "We're finding out thatwe're able to process our purchaserequests much faster. Quality hasgone up on our purchase requests."

Seven hundred new AFLC pro-cess action teams-basically sug-gestion and quality-control groups-are now at work. Recently, such ateam at the San Antonio Air Logis-tics Center devised a new coatingfor the augmentor on the back end ofthe Fl00 engine. AFLC maintainsthat the new process will extend thelife of the typical augmentor by twoand a half years.

Another recent AFLC reorga-

AIR FORCE Magazine / August 1989

and other space systems under itslogistics authority.

Contractors and SustainabilitySqueezing the most out of the

AFLC budget will also require cut-ting sustainability costs. Revamp-ing the AFLC infrastructure cansolve only part of the problem. Thecommand will have to work withcontractors to make sure that weap-ons in the future need less mainte-nance and supply.

General Hansen points to wideruse of the technology trade fair asone answer to this long-term need.These gatherings, held at logisticscenters across the country and ad-vertised in Commerce BusinessDaily, feature parts that are causingtrouble, whether they involve avi-onics or engine components. Theparts are laid out on tables, giving

the whole thing the air of an adults'science fair. In some instances, saysGeneral Hansen, "we'll go aheadand write a contract right there" if acontractor proffers a workable idea.

A carrot-and-stick approach isbeing adopted at AFLC for improv-ing contractor performance on cer-tain stock items. The carrot is a"Blue-Ribbon Contractor" designa-tion for firms that deliver on time,with good quality. Such recogni-tion, officials say, can lead to morebusiness. That is because, on ap-plicable contracts, AFLC is autho-rized to pay up to twenty percenthigher than the lowest bid in order todo business with a proven, Blue-Ribbon contractor. All 241 stock-item classes carried at WarnerRobins are open to Blue-Ribboncompetition.

The stick is the Contractor Re-sponsibility Review Program(CRRP), which rates company per-formance on a kind of report cardused by AFLC managers in deter-mining purchase decisions. TheCRRP isn't perfect. "We got anastygram the other day from a guywe said was sixty percent delin-quent on two of his contracts," saysGeneral Gillis of Warner Robins."He wrote and said, 'Your data isscrewed up. I never delivered any-thing late in my life.' He was right."

Even so, the report cards aregoing to be a fact oflife, claims Gen-eral Gillis. CRRP will be one of hismain tools to raise on-time deliveryrates, which currently hover in thefifty percent range rather than theAFLC goal of eighty-five percent.Warns the General: "If a contractorconsistently fails to deliver on time,we will not award future contracts tohim, period."

New Technology in Old SystemsWeapon master plans are another

means of addressing the cost of sus-tainability. They layout the ex-pected logistics expenses over theservice life of an aircraft or othersystem, showing effects of modifi-cations on the support budget. As aresult, decision-makers will be bet-ter informed about the costs of up-dating a weapon. "We're actuallyworking on a ten-year projection onan airplane, cradle to grave," saysGeneral Hansen. "It's the first timewe've done that."

The most promising way to cut

33

sustainability costs is the use of newtechnology. In the past, scientificadvances tended to pass AFLC by;now the command has a chief scien-tist to provide an AFLC liaison tothe scientific community. The ideais to ease the logistics burden byinserting new technology in old sys-tems.

Example: the F-llID digital sig-nal transfer unit. At present, twoparticularly complex circuit boardsin the unit each cost $24,000 andsustain a mean time betweenfailures of forty hours. These unitscan be replaced by a single board ata cost of $3,000 and a mean timebetween failures of 5,000 hours. Thesecret? The new board has oneVery-High-Speed Integrated Circuit

are giving it quick logistics payoff inthe short term, even bigger savingscan be achieved by giving attentionto the support needs of a weapon inits design. That is the job of the Ac-quisition Logistics Center.

The potential importance of suchan approach can be seen in a just-completed Air Force study of aHigh Reliability Fighter concept.The study took a baseline aircraft-representing capabilities from theF-16, the F-15, and other existingplanes-and concluded that, in athirty-day campaign, it could killabout 5,000 targets. Then, usingtechnologies that are now availableor will be available by the year 2000,the study rated a hypothetical fight-er whose reliability and ease of

The amount of money saved bydesigning for better logistics could begreat. According to one estimate,maintenance accounts for aboutthirty-five percent of the life-cyclecost of military systems.

(VHSIC), a cutting-edge microchipthat packs an unprecedentedamount of processing power into atiny space.

The Seek Igloo radar system, lo-cated at remote sites in Alaska, alsowill benefit from a VHSIC retrofit.Currently, Seek Igloo signal-pro-cessing units fail once every twenty-nine days, on average. With newVHSIC technology and a modulararchitecture, mean time betweenfailures is being lengthened to sevenmonths, and the size of the process-ing unit is shrinking. Life-cycle costsavings are estimated at $315 mil-lion.

"With these kinds of results, weneed to get VHSIC into more of oursystems," says Maj. Gen. JosephSpiers, Commander of the AirForce Acquisition Logistics Center.While upgrades to existing weapons

34

maintenance had been maximized.Target-kill capability rose to 9,000.

The amount of money saved bydesigning for better logistics couldbe great. According to one estimate,maintenance accounts for aboutthirty-five percent of the life-cyclecost of military systems.

High-Tech Inventory ControlUse of new technology in other

areas also could save big bucks.AFLC stocks an inventory of2,000,000 items worth $25 billion.Keeping track of this inventory andmoving it worldwide is an intricateand expensive task, and any im-provement in efficiency could havea big payoff.

The Microcircuit Technology in

Logistics Applications (MITLA)program is one high-tech effort tomake AFLC inventory efforts moreefficient. It uses "smart cards"-small memoryllogic devices carry-ing a silicon chip-to mark andtrack Air Force parts and workers.For personnel, smart cards canstore all service records, replacingpaper files that must be moved onreassignment. For parts, the smartcards will be able to transmit infor-mation, such as remaining productshelf life, over data networks backto AFLC headquarters.

Another experimental effort isthe Micro Miniature Time StressMeasurement Device, known as theMicro TSMD. This device is like atiny weather station, a combinationof microchip and miniature sensorplaced in a weapon to record tem-peratures, G-forces, and other en-vironmental parameters to whichequipment is subjected. Data aretapped by diagnostic tools.

First test of the Micro TSMD willbe on the electronic warfare systemof the F-4G Wild Weasel. Even-tually it could become a partner inlogistics with MITLA. "A MITLAtag can identify and record that afailure has occurred and track themaintenance actions required to fixit," explains General Spiers. "TheMicro TSMD gives the details as towhy the failure occurred."

Even computer-created cartoonsare being enlisted to improve logis-tics. "Crew Chief" is an experimen-tal, computer-graphics simulation ofa maintenance technician. Engi-neers designing weapons with com-puter-aided systems now can plugCrew Chief into their workstationsand find out how hard it might be fora real person to maintain the newsystem. Crew Chief shows whethera human can reach all bolts, wheth-er he can see in tight spots, andwhether he's strong enough to re-move a module.

"It actually simulates mainte-nance actions," says GeneralSpiers. Someday, Crew Chief mightfinally put an end to one of the favor-ite imprecations of real chiefs expe-riencing problems getting some-thing off of or into a plane: "The guywho designed this should have todo it himself." •

Peter Grier is a Washington-based defense correspondent for the ChristianScience Monitor, This is his first article for AIR FORCE Magazine,

AIR FORCE Magazine / August 1989