Senior maintenance leaders look forward with defined goals

  • Published
WASHINGTON (AFNEWS) --  Top Air Force leaders from the maintenance fields met in San Antonio in December for the semiannual Air Force Maintenance and Munitions Advisory Group meeting.

Brig. Gen. Kathleen D. Close, the Air Force director of maintenance, led the meeting that included representatives from all major commands and Pentagon headquarters as well as members of the Air Force Executive Board, the Air Force Munitions and Missile Maintenance Executive Board and the Maintenance Chief's Advisory Board.

The leaders gathered to embark on the first-ever enterprise-wide strategic plan for the maintenance field.

Called Air Force Maintenance for the 21st century, or AFMx21, the plan will provide a focused, enterprise approach to guiding the Air Force maintenance community in both the near and long-term.

AFMx21 provides the roadmap to ensure our transformation efforts are aligned and linked directly to expeditionary logistics for the 21st century (eLog21), agile combat support and the overall Air Force strategic plan.

"Logisticians are, by the nature of our jobs, planners," General Close said. "Unfortunately, we sometimes don't have a long-term perspective. AFMx21 will help us with that long-term perspective and aid us in focusing on initiatives that will help us become more efficient."

The meeting built on the foundational work of headquarters and major command senior enlisted and officer maintainers who gathered in Dayton, Ohio, for the initial AFMx21 strategic planning offsite held in August 2006.

The group agreed to a vision, which is the desired future-state for how they envision Air Force maintenance. That vision is "total force, multi-skilled maintainers safely generating and sustaining secure, mission ready weapons systems, munitions, and equipment in a lean, flexible, global environment."

Airmen at the meeting also agreed to four goals that describe what the maintenance community wants to accomplish through fiscal year 2016. Each goal is supported by a number of measurable and time-bounded objectives as well as tasks and action plans that will be detailed in the spring 2007 AFMx21 implementation plan.

Those goals are as followed:

Goal 1 -- People: Develop and retain America's best and brightest, producing highly qualified and motivated, multi-skilled maintainers to meet mission requirements safely, effectively, and efficiently ... make the "U.S. Air Force the service of choice."

Goal 2 -- Process, organizations and policy: Design lean, flexible, and integrated maintenance processes, organizations, and policy, and commit to a culture that demands safer, cost-effective, and efficient maintenance operations.

Goal 3 -- Equipment, information systems and infrastructure: Provide maintainers the right equipment and tools, information systems, and infrastructure to quickly generate safe, mission-ready weapon systems and munitions.

Goal 4 -- Expeditionary maintenance: Deliver integrated and precise maintenance capability -- anywhere, on time, and on target.

Those who attended will continue to meet over the next six months to define the tasks for implementation.

"The Air Force needs to transform in order to achieve our stated priorities of first fighting the war on terrorism, secondly by recapitalizing our fleet and last, but not least, is taking care of our people," General Close said. "AFMx21 is maintenance's response to the priorities set by Secretary (of the Air Force Michael W.) Wynne and Gen. (T. Michael) Moseley (the Air Force chief of staff)."

Comment on this story (comments may be published on Air Force Link)

Click here to view the comments/letters page