AFIT takes students back to the basics with its Applied Maintenance Management Concepts course - Air Force Institute of Technology

Air Force Journal of Logistics, Spring, 2003 by Donald S. Metscher, David P. Collette

What Is AFIT?

The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) has two schools available for the traditional logistics career fields. One is the Graduate School of Engineering and Management in which officers, civilian equivalents, and noncommissioned officers can attend an 18-month program and earn a master's degree. More information can be located at the AFIT Web site: www.afit.edu. The other is the School of Systems and Logistics.

What Is the School of Systems and Logistics?

The School of Systems and Logistics, where the authors are currently assigned, provides professional continuing education to military and Department of Defense employees. The school has an administrative department and three education departments. The department offers 12 courses to the logistics field, one of which is the Applied Maintenance Management Concepts, WLOG 262, and is recommended for undergraduate credit. Students who complete WLOG 262 earn 5 quarter hours of upper-level undergraduate management. More information can be located at the School of Systems and Logistics Web site: www.ls.afit.edu

What Is Applied Maintenance Management Concepts?

The Applied Maintenance Management Concepts course gives logistics managers and supervisors an array of executive skills. Of the executive skills taught, 80 percent originate from the field of Production and Operations Management, 10 percent from Psychology, and 10 percent from Base Environmental Management. All topics are directly applicable to military management functions supporting base-level operational units. The course exposes students to the latest policies and initiatives and challenges them to apply both theory and techniques to current management problems confronting base-level logistics managers. In addition, the application of statistical concepts, statistical process control, and reliability and maintainability measures are illustrated through practical exercises. During the last year, WLOG 262 was offered 11 times. AFIT hosted five offerings during the calendar year, while six other onsite offerings were hosted by the United States Air Forces in Europe, Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), Air Mobility Command, and Air Education and Training Command. To request this course at your base, coordinate with your major command (MAJCOM) training functional manager. When instructors are teaching in the field, they solicit research topics from the group-level maintenance leaders. Teams of four to six students apply course concepts to current concerns and experience the academic problem-solving process. Sometimes these group projects evolve into follow-on consulting projects that may be worked after the end of an onsite course.

Rediscovering Metrics and Statistical Process Control to Analyze the Health of the Fleet

In a recent class conducted in the field by the course director, Major Gary Nogrady, and an instructor, Captain David Collette, a student team, headed up by Captain Chris Melcher, responded to a group commander's concern over the rising not-mission capable-for -maintenance (NMCM) rates in the local F-16 fleet, resulting in decreasing aircraft availability. The study utilized statistical process control techniques to identify work unit codes (WUC) that may be out of control and driving the high NMCM rate. The goals were to identify and isolate which WUCs were driving the high NMCM rate and then recommend areas for further analysis. Out of control does not mean the process is broken, rather the process is no longer behaving the same when compared to historical data. When a process is out of control, managers should identify why the process is behaving the way it is and determine which management decisions to make, if any, to return the process to an in-control state.

Mechanics of the Analysis

Historical Data

Historical data were gathered from the wing's PACAF RCS 7211 Monthly Maintenance Summary. This information is available through the analysis section within each maintenance complex and may be available in electronic format through the MAJCOM. In the case of this particular study, 5 years of data were available at the base. The data were in a monthly average format and unavailable as daily data. Daily data could have provided a stronger statistical evaluation by highlighting all the variation in the data. Monthly averages tend to hide the natural variations that occur in any manufacturing process.

Assumptions

In any analysis, certain assumptions must be made. In this case, we assumed the Core Automated Maintenance data are complete and accurate. The findings and recommendations are limited to the techniques taught in LOG262 and the short time allotted to study the problem.

Data Issues

Data issues included the analysis based on a limited data set (only 5 years of data). The data were divided into two piles: recent and historical. The most recent 12 months of data were plotted on the control charts, and everything else was labeled historical. The historical data were used to estimate the mean and standard deviation. And finally, the historical data were assumed to be in control to create statistically valid estimates of the mean and standard deviation