Airman $9,000 richer for maintenance suggestion

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BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. (AFPN) --  A $9,000 award was given to a technical sergeant from the 2nd Maintenance Squadron here for his suggestion through the Air Force Innovative Development through Employee Awareness program, known as IDEA.

Tech. Sgt. John Biery received recognition for correcting a maintenance problem on F-16 Fighting Falcons. The first-year savings for this improvement is $60,000. 

Sergeant Biery’s idea dealt with the field-level repair of misaligned holes on the leading edges of F-16 aircraft horizontal stabilizers. There are discrepant alignment problems with the horizontal stabilizer box assembly.

Sergeant Biery realized this was a problem in 1999 while he was deployed to Aviano Air Base, Italy.
 
“We went through the F-16 horizontal leading edges on a daily basis which piqued my interest in how much they cost and looked for a way to prevent them from being condemned,” he said. 

Sergeant Biery said he originally sent the idea to engineers in 2002 while assigned to the 388th Maintenance Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. 

“The unit had a continuous problem with supply not being able to get enough of these leading edges in a timely manner,” he said. “This was impacting flying hours and mission readiness.

"Simply put, we could not get enough of the stabilizer leading edges to us as fast as we were going through them, due to alignment issues when they were installed," Sergeant Biery said. "When the leading edge was checked for proper alignment, some of them would not line up properly and there was no fix to this problem.

“I came up with a way to allow for alignment of the leading edge. I had some doubts whether the engineers would be interested due to this being a critical control surface with very strict repair instructions,” Sergeant Biery said. “Once I had my idea formulated I forwarded the instructions and pictures to engineering and they started using them at the depot at Hill AFB.” 

Sergeant Biery said he decided to turn in his idea for award consideration once the depot successfully used the repair several times.