Airmen make AFSO 21 successful

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Reynaldo Ramon
  • 18th Wing Public Affairs
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan (AFPN) --  The Air Force's top Smart Operations for the 21st century leader said Airmen and their ideas are critical to the success of the service's efforts to improve efficiency during a visit Sept. 17 here.

"Individual Airmen are incredibly important to the success of AFSO 21," said Dr. Ronald Ritter, special assistant to the secretary of the Air Force for AFSO 21. "Airmen have the opportunity and responsibility to contribute to the process." 

Sixty percent of AFSO 21's impact comes from efforts of Airmen and mid-level employees to improve work-related issues and share their ideas with the Air Force to save money, said Mr. Ritter during a tour of Pacific bases. 

"We care about Airmen being productive, ensuring equipment is readily available, making things faster, more responsive, and energy efficient," he said.

The objective function of AFSO 21 is the results, impact, change and performance gains on things that are vital to the mission. Every person at every level plays a key role.

"Leaders need to lead. They need to set direction, identify priorities and manage for results. The mid-level (managers) need to work, support and deliver resources to those front-line Airmen to be successful," said Mr. Ritter. "It's the front-line Airmen who will find the problems and come up with the solutions."

Although we have made a lot of progress in the last 12 months, we still have a very long way to go, the AFSO 21 leader said. 

With 42,000 fewer people and $2 billion less spent on contracting, AFSO 21 is a very powerful tool for driving people productivity, he said.

"We've seen incredibly high-quality activity going on, and it's saving millions of work hours, saving millions of dollars and increasing capability," Mr. Ritter said. "We have got to take responsibility and engage to help support that pressure that is in the system."

The biggest high-dollar, high-value initiative in the Air Force is fuel and energy management.

"There's a lot of work going on, particularly in the Air Mobility Command, optimizing the use of fuel," he said. "That's important because being more flight efficient with fuel increases range and payload for all aircraft. It's a direct combat contribution."

Many different areas in the Air Force are beginning to take hold of AFSO 21. In the future, Airmen will see new programs affecting the quality of professional military education -- at first term Airmen centers, noncommissioned officer academies, and the Air War College.

"We're most focused on getting a real good track record with real high value results being demonstrated and delivered so that people across the Air Force will understand and see the benefit," said Mr. Ritter.

The core of AFSO 21 is to make Airmen -- the Air Force's most valuable asset -- more productive, he said. 

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