Enterprise AIRSpeed

Navy Supply Corps Newsletter, Sept-Oct, 2005 by Mark Nieto

The Enterprise AIRSpeed teams consist of military, contractor and civilian personnel who have been assigned from Commander Naval Air Forces (CNAF), Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC), Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) and Naval Air Technical Data and Engineering Command (NATEC). The teams travel around the world to facilitate AIRSpeed designs at Navy and Marine Corps intermediate and depot level maintenance activities as well as Supply Departments/Divisions.

The primary program office is comprised of 42 dedicated active duty maintenance and supply officers, enlisted, civil servants, and contractors located in offices at NAS North Island and NAS Patuxent River. The program also has 41 qualified NAVAIR Fleet Support Team (FST) and NATEC personnel from around the fleet. The purpose of this article is to briefly introduce Enterprise AIRSpeed structure and methodology from a team lead perspective.

I would also like to focus on how Theory of Constraints (TOC) is used to "design" the future state of Naval Aviation and how Lean and Six Sigma are utilized with TOC to achieve that future state of AIRSpeed.

Background

In the past, Naval Aviation has been very successful at generating Readiness; however we have always done so at a great cost. Maintaining Naval Aviation today while building the Naval Aviation of tomorrow requires that we now embark on a journey to ensure that we don't buy more readiness than we need as well as enable the purchase of new systems and aircraft in the future.

The vehicle for this journey is Enterprise AIRSpeed, Naval Aviation Readiness Integrated Improvement Program's (NAVRIIP) architecture for realizing cost-wise readiness across the Naval Aviation Enterprise. Unlike the current practice of operating within our disciplines, commonly referred to as stovepipes, this is an enterprise approach of looking at the business of Naval Aviation. This enterprise is defined as the integration of organizational, intermediate and depot levels of maintenance with the retail and wholesale activities of supply as they support ashore and afloat activities.

Enterprise AIRSpeed is doing something that no other DoD activity has attempted; integrating TOC, Lean and Six Sigma methodologies and applying them across the entire enterprise in order to effectively and efficiently prepare ready for tasking (RFT) aircraft. Most commercial companies and DoD activities choose either TOC, Lean or Six Sigma. Some choose Lean and Six Sigma but only Naval Aviation has decided to utilize all three tools simultaneously. Naval Aviation is truly paving the path for DoD.

Enterprise AIRSpeed is sponsored by CNAF and is governed by an executive steering committee consisting of representatives from CNAF, Naval Inventory Control Point, Philadelphia (NAVICP), Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), NAVAIR, OPNAV, HQMC, and the Center for Naval Technical Training (CNATT).

What are the methodologies?

Theory of Constraints (TOC) is based on the belief that any organization has at least one constraint and that any improvements on non-constraints may not yield as significant return on investment (ROI) as working on the constraint itself once identified. It is also based on market demand-pull logistics, which creates architecture where physical inventory (buffer) levels and related maintenance processes at intermediate and depot activities are based on actual real-time demand (pull) in the time to reliably replenish (TRR).

Lean focuses on the removal of waste-defined as anything not necessary (no value added) to produce the product or service with a reduction in cycle time for the product or service provided to the intended customer.

Six Sigma is based on the assumption that the outcome of the entire process will be improved by reducing the variation of multiple elements, inputs and subprocesses.

AIRSpeed Provides

* A proven set of industry tools into Naval Aviation Enterprise

* Leveraging of existing initiatives

* Local production/replenishment decisions made with global impact known

* A culture of continuous process improvement

* Increased, improved and effective support of the Fleet Response Plan (FRP)

* Improved logistics/maintenance response

* Improvement to throughput (readiness) while identifying reductions to operating expenses and investments such as inventory, manpower, support equipment and facilities.

What do we do?

The basics of an I-Level AIRSpeed Design Phase:

* Determine a starting point by selecting top local and systemwide readiness/cost degrader components to determine the I-level work centers to begin design

* Determine the "As-Is" environment with physical configuration diagrams, local process flow diagrams and documentation of local processes

* Measure capacity of test benches/ SE/manpower in selected work centers

* Determine I-Level work center TRRs and supply processing TRRs to establish total local TRRs based on time for component to go from the aircraft, to the I-Level, through the repair process and onto supply's shelf ready for issue (RFI)--Think of total TRR as attaching and activating a stopwatch on a non-RFI component from the time it is removed from an aircraft and stop the watch after it has gone through the repair process and is actually on the shelf RFI available to the end-user