AGE of excellence

  • Published
  • By Capt. Mae-Li Allison
  • 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) --  Empty closets and pantries are often considered signs of scarcity and tough times. But when Tech. Sgt. Timothy Haun opens the “hold bin,” a pantry that used to be full of manila envelopes and boxes, he sees mostly empty space, and he is happy about it.

The manila envelopes and boxes contained pieces and parts to machines maintained by the aerospace ground equipment flight at a forward-deployed location here. The empty bin signifies that all those parts have been finally placed in the proper ground equipment to make them work.

“In the span of about 45 days, a team of nine Alabama Air National Guardsmen from the flight (reduced) more than 400 maintenance parts in this hold bin to just three,” said Sergeant Haun, the maintenance team leader for the AGE flight, who is deployed from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.

Sergeant Haun and others in his flight emphasize, though, that the nine people could not have been successful without the rest of the flight doing great work as well.

More than 70 people comprise the AGE flight and maintain nearly 800 pieces of equipment -- about double that of most bases -- primarily used to support operations on the flightline. They also provide some equipment for the munitions flight and other back shops. Some of the equipment the Airmen maintain includes generators, air-conditioners, heaters, jacks to lift all types of aircraft, floodlights and bomb-lift trucks for weapons loaders.

The drastic reduction in the number of mechanical parts “waiting” to be put on ground equipment is just one example of how the team-centered plan has produced results, said the flight’s chief, Senior Master Sgt. Jimmie Carter, who is deployed from Eglin AFB, Fla.

“We’re using different management techniques than those used in the past,” he said. “We’ve been putting teams in charge of a single area of work during their time deployed here. This gives the teams ownership of an area, and they take pride in that. We’ve also streamlined our work force by reducing the number of technicians working on certain jobs when it makes sense. This has helped us make efficient use of our manpower.”

Falling under the expeditionary maintenance squadron, the flight is divided into four sections: maintenance, inspection, dispatch servicing and production support. The maintenance section fixes the equipment that breaks, the inspection section does all required inspections of the equipment, dispatch servicing moves equipment to and from the flightline, and production support maintains technical orders, specialty tools and other benchstock items.

By breaking these four sections into several individual teams, each with an even more focused objective, the Airmen have produced positive results since arriving in September, officials said.

In the month of October alone, the Airmen performed more than 3,500 service inspections, more than 900 maintenance actions and almost 200 periodic inspections on equipment. They also raised the in-commission rate of equipment from 78 to 96 percent.

“We’re fixing things that have been broken for about one-and-a-half years,” Sergeant Carter said.

Although everyone in the flight works 12-hour shifts, mostly in open hangars exposed to extreme desert temperatures, their positive attitudes are readily apparent when entering their work areas, Sergeant Carter said. Much of that positive feeling comes from a sense of accomplishment after having improved a little every day.

“Since we’ve been here, I’ve been reiterating a saying of mine to the people in the flight,” Sergeant Carter said. “We originally had a huge mountain (of work) and wanted to take a chunk out of that mountain, but now we’ve actually removed that mountain and have left a small chunk for the next rotation.”