By Shelia Watson

CHARLESTON -- With a series of initiatives, the Charleston Air Force Base is streamlining the way Air Mobility Command is doing business.

Air Mobility Command, headquartered at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, is the division of the Air Force that provides global mobility and sustainment for the armed forces. The 437th Airlift Wing at Charleston is one of 15 AMC units, which includes three air mobility wings, eight airlift wings and groups, and four tanker wings and groups throughout the United States.

The team at Charleston AFB figured out how to shorten preflight time for aircraft by focusing on reducing redundancies and eliminating overlap during the preflight procedures.

“Through our ‘sequence of events’ initiative, we’re streamlining the way the aircraft launch,” said Lt. Col. George McDowell, chief of the 437th Wing Plan for Charleston and the wing facilitator for the program’s training and communication. “It used to take 16 hours from the time we get the cargo to get it on the plane. Through our value stream mapping, it now takes about three hours.

“Essentially, we’re trying to get to be more like a NASCAR pit team.”

The overall initiative is called Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century, or AFSO-21. The initiative involves training to identify and reduce waste in the processes on the base, McDowell said.

“Training is the key element, especially for supervisors,” he said

The underlying idea, McDowell said, is to get everyone in the mindset of not wasting time, money or resources and then giving them the tools they need to identify ways to cut out waste.

“Overall it saves money, time and manpower,” he said. “We’ve had several good money-saving initiatives, and a lot of them are things that just make more sense. And it’s important because it’s how we’re managing the taxpayers’ assets.”

McDowell said the team is making “great strides” in how AMC moves troops.

“We’re doing it a lot smarter, moving them all at once for a given period of time as opposed to moving each with his own support materials,” he said. “It’s easier to manage that way, and the quality of life for the troops, even while deployed, is much better than it used to be.”

All personnel are encouraged to remember that the initiatives are not merely about saving time, he said.

“We’re not just training everybody on smart techniques; we’re helping to save lives,” he said. “When we can get the armor to the humvees faster, that can save lives.”

He admitted the AFSO-21 has had its fair share of challenges.

“It’s hard to change the culture, to show how one person’s actions can impact the overall mission,” McDowell said.

Nevertheless, the list of initiatives is growing because people are seeing results, which emboldens them to make further suggestions, he said.

“Now we’re thinking about everything,” he said. “We’re thinking about what we really need to do to make the mission happen.”

The Air Force owes much to the business culture, which has a mindset toward process improvement, McDowell said.

“We’re learning a lot from business and the ways the civilian community has embraced change of this sort, and we try to incorporate those ways into what we’re doing,” he said.

A few of the Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century initiatives have seen significant savings in time and money include:

• Sequence of Events: reduced alert time from 2 hours 45 minutes to 1 hour 15 minutes, which increased flight time by 11%.

• Aerial Port Squadron: revised processes to reduce cargo load time from 16 hours to 3 hours.

• Capability Forecasting: increased efficiency of explosive shipment clearance process by 58% and of weapons shipment
clearance process by 63%.

• Parts Supply: reduction in waste resulted in $8,492,146 annual cost avoidance, process time reduced from 270.25 to 25.5 minutes and travel distance reduced from 8.68 to .94 miles.

• Consolidated Tool Kit: saves 51% or 187 minutes per shift.