Communication: key to modern maintenance

Flying Safety, June, 2002 by G. Arleigh Dom

But the most personal means of communication is certainly the field representative or field engineer. Constantly available for consultation, he is a walking miniature edition of the company he represents: an educator, advisor and engineer.

These are ways in which we try to improve the lines of communication. But they are not, in themselves, enough to ensure what is most important: That every mechanic be fully aware of what he is supposed to do in a particular situation. Now, I suppose, the producers of aircraft might write more T.O.s. and booklets and send more field representatives to air bases. But this would be missing the point, which is that men who are maintaining modern aircraft need a quality of understanding that cannot be obtained from any quantity of information. This sort of understanding can come only through positive attempts to solve these new problems. The question now is, how can we help you? In other words, without swamping you with material, what can we give you to increase your personal efficiency?

Many years ago, this would have been a strange request to make indeed. Aircraft companies were happy enough to sell the equipment they made, without worrying about how the customers got along with it. Now, every reputable company which supplies intricate weapons to the Air Force is glad to provide services in a hundred ways, including those we have already discussed. There are other services which depend on requests from the users of the product, and it's these that you should learn to take advantage of.

The field representative, for example, is someone who is at the base not only to represent his company but also to advise in every conceivable way the men who are taking care of the aircraft. It's up to the individual mechanic to bring his questions to the field rep's attention.

Ordinarily you should find in the T.O. just about everything you need to know, and it is usually correct, but there are times when, for example, the text is unclear or incomplete and perhaps even mistaken. The mechanic's responsibility is to take action, research the problem, ask the field representative, ask other authorities. In short, become an active participant to the solution.

The field representative is the proper authority at the base to represent his company. It may be, however, that a puzzle arises and you want more voices in the discussion. You may be pleasantly surprised at the attention any manufacturer will give to your problem. There are a couple of reasons for this attention.

For one thing, we who manufacture a weapon are as eager as you are to make it a smoothly operating piece of equipment; any of its problems that can be solved is a step towards making it that much better. But there's a second reason, too, and it goes to the heart of the matter we've been discussing.

Have you ever noticed that some supervisors leave their office door open? They're not just circulating air, if my guess is correct. The open door is a symbolic invitation to exchange ideas, and this is communication. Whether it's the door of a supervisor, or figuratively of a large company, I firmly believe it's a good policy to have the work passed up as well as down. There are very real practical reasons for the policy, and one of them is that it's one of the few ways the supervisor (or the company) has of finding out what his people are saying. It's easy enough for us to pass out literature and send representatives around; but it's difficult to find out what effect this communication is having unless there is another line of communication, from you to us.