Tinker employees awarded $10K for ideas

  • Published
  • By Amy Welch
  • Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. (AFPN) --  Collectively saving the Air Force more than $700,000 in the next year recently made two employees here $10,000 richer thanks to suggestions submitted to the Innovative Development through Employee Awareness program.

Karen Goss, a publications systems specialist earned her $10,000 by discovering a computer glitch that will save the Air Force $118,344. Fellow award recipient Joe Clark, an accessories equipment specialist, earned his check for finding a way to clean $20,000 E-3 Sentry engine coolers rather than condemning them.

In Goss' case, she said, "I was doing some research for one of the customers about items they didn't receive, and I found a bunch of items that had no cost. So then I started looking at everything for that day, then everything for that quarter, then everything for that year, and I realized that somewhere along the way, we stopped charging for certain items."

Besides placing financial strain on her department, Goss said the error posed legal problems as well. Her department supports time compliance technical orders for foreign military sales customers that identify a need for items to be reviewed or modified.

"Sometimes those TCTOs have supplements to them and, for some reason, our system was coded where customers weren't being charged for those things," she said. 'Public law requires for foreign military sales that we document releasability and that we recoup all costs. So, the costs for the supplements were not being recouped."

Goss, a 29-year Tinker employee, said her catch will help all FMS technical order positions across several offices at all AFMC bases.

"The Air Force incurs costs when we write tech orders in accumulating data like getting studies, reports and things like that from contractors," she said. "So, this is a recovery of those costs.

Bill Mobbs, Goss' supervisor, although impressed, was not surprised with Goss's drive.

"Karen is an exceptional employee," Mobbs said. "Her enthusiasm, commitment, and comprehensive, forward-thinking view makes her a valuable player in any endeavor."

As for the $10,000 award, Goss said besides spending the money on her home and family, she and her friends may take a trip to New Orleans.

Speaking of how he'll spend his $10,000 award, Clark said he and his wife, Tammy, will take "a badly needed vacation ... I've always wanted to see the Smokey Mountains."

Faced with the E-3 engine line reaching mission-incapable status, Clark's award-winning journey began as he started thinking of ways to correct the issue.

"While looking into it, I noticed the engine coolers were being condemned and thrown away because they were clogged, and we don't have the ability on base to flush the carbon deposits," Clark said.

As oil gets heated and flows through the engine cooler, it builds up a carbon deposit, Clark explained. Initially, a little of it can be cleaned, but over a period of time, it builds up to a point where it cannot, and the coolers were being thrown away.

"And those things are $20,000 a piece," Clark said.

Clark said he found three coolers in a trash pile and, through research, found eight more in Texarkana, Texas, through the Defense Reutilization Marketing Office. While DRMO shipped the coolers back to Tinker, Clark, a motorcycle enthusiast, used a common chemical to wash one of the clogged coolers. His hunch paid off as the cleaned cooler passed a pressure test, rendering it usable for the E-3 engines.

"I think what really brought this on was the immediate need," Clark said. "I mean, we had E-3s that were grounded and engines that we couldn't produce because of those coolers. It just seemed obvious to me to clean the coolers."

Besides doing his regular job, Clark located a company in Stillwater with the time and the resources to clean the coolers. Using his truck and personal time, Clark drove the additional coolers to Stillwater and brought them back for the all-important pressure test. Every cooler passed, bringing the total to 10 coolers that workers could use.

For Clark, the award is a side effect of doing the right thing, not only for his job but also for the warfighter.

"What happens when that engine cooler gets clogged, you immediately see high temperatures from the cockpit, which, depending on the range, they'd have to abort the mission or not even start," he said. "You can't fly a jet if the engines are too hot."

Clark's supervisor, Tom Brickman, said Clark's resourcefulness would inspire any manager.

"He actually hand-carried these items to vendors on his own time using his own vehicle trying to find someone who could fix them," Brickman said. "That's more than you'd expect from any employee." (Courtesy of Air Force Materiel Command News Service)