Improving equipment management using lessons learned from the air force spares management process

Air Force Journal of Logistics, Summer, 2006 by Douglas J. Blazer, Lori C. Jones, Wayne B. Faulkner, Paige G. Meeks, Cathy McIntosh, John D. Yelverton

Introduction

For the last two years, and under the direction of the Warner Robins Equipment Management Office (542d MSUG/ GBMM), the Air Force has improved its equipment management process, developing automated tools that have improved the equipment requirement methods and execution of logistics decisions, such as buy, repair, distribute, redistribute and allocate funds. The underlying reason was to apply successful spares management technology and business practices to equipment.

In the late 1980s, the Air Force developed a way to link mission capability, that is, aircraft availability, to spares funding. The Air Force could identify the change in the number of available aircraft that would result from a change in spares funding, and aircraft availability became the prioritization logic for spares execution decisions. The spares community also employed automated systems like the Execution and Prioritization of Repair Support System (EXPRESS), to prioritize the repair, distribution, and redistribution of assets that exceeded a base's requisition objective.

Current equipment systems do an adequate job of computing the spares requirement, but nothing ensures the effective fulfillment of that requirement. The equipment community cannot link mission needs to equipment requirements, nor does it have the automated tools to make equipment execution decisions. There is no systemic redistribution of malpositioned equipment. In addition there is no way to prioritize repairs or identify repair backlogs.

Until recently, no equipment system could ensure serviceable assets were released promptly. Further, there was no way to prioritize what to buy or how to allocate funds to maximize Air Force mission capability. These execution decisions depended on item managers continuously reviewing their inventories. There were no tools available to let those managers know that action was required. More importantly, no tools considered the entire Air Force enterprise in execution decisions.

When funds are limited, what is the next item that should be inducted into repair? Nothing provided the necessary oversight and enterprise prioritization to ensure the right decisions were made.

In the last two years, the Air Force has found a way to link equipment support to Air Force readiness. This association is the key to determining the most effective way to execute equipment decisions that result in the largest number of organizations reporting as mission ready. Aside from supporting funding decisions, the linkage provides a basis from which to prioritize equipment requirements and decide how best to spend limited resources.

Using the prioritization logic of the Status of Operational Readiness and Training System (SORTS), LMI developed automated processes to perform the following.

* Prioritize equipment buys

* Distribute equipment

* Redistribute improperly positioned equipment

* Induct items into repair

LMI also developed an automated process that will improve the accuracy of the Air Force's forecasting and computation of replacement needs.

Equipment Prioritization

The Air Force now uses prioritization logic to link readiness to support equipment purchases. The prioritization logic uses SORTS-driven fill rate targets to make asset and resource allocation decisions (see Table 1). This approach uses marginal analysis to maximize the number of organizations that are fully mission ready by force activity designator (FAD) and use code (A for mobility, D for war readiness materiel, and B for support equipment).

Figure 1 illustrates how the prioritization logic ranks equipment. In a waterfall effect, it allocates assets to FAD I, II, and III, use code A units until those organizations achieve a 90 percent (S-1) fill rate. It then allocates assets to FAD IV and V, use code A organizations until they reach an 80 percent (S-2) fill rate, and so on.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Table 2 presents the fill-rate targets for each prioritization tier. Once all organizations meet their Tier 1 fill-rate target, the prioritization process starts over for the next tier, with higher fill rate targets.

LMI applied this prioritization logic to the fiscal year (FY04) support equipment buy list by organization for each stock record account number, and compared the resulting Air Force's SORTS-driven fill rates to the current Uniform Material Movement and Issue Priority System (UMMIPS) method of prioritizing requirements. Table 3 presents those results.

The Air Force funding in FY04 for budget program (BP) 12, common support equipment, was $217M. Applying the SORTS-driven fill-rate targets, the Air Force would have prioritized the purchase of 18,000 units of equipment. This is a marked increase from the 7,400 units of equipment the Air Force would have purchased with UMMIPS. The SORTS-driven prioritization approach would have also resulted in 2,943 S-1 rated organizations, whereas only 1,339 organizations would have been S-1 rated had the UMMIPS method been employed.

In other words, the use of the new prioritization logic would have resulted in a 120 percent increase ([2,943 - 1,339] / 1339 = 1.2) in S-1 rated organizations for BP-12 purchases, and a 68 percent increase ([3,858 - 2,289] / 2,289 = 0.68) in S-1 rated organizations for BP-84 purchases. Likewise, there would have been no S-4 rated organizations, compared to 770 [BP12] and 1,471 [BP-84] with UMMIPS, for other base maintenance (BP-84) and support equipment (BP-12).