Maintenance Support Strategies
Peter J. DyeGeostrategic, economic, and technological changes will make support of air operations, both at home and oversaes, increasingly dependent on the flexibility and responsiveness of the military logistic organization. This requires the creation of a highly integrated and agile support chain with global reach.
Military aviation maintenance support strategies are undergoing significant transformation in the aftermath of the Cold War. Organizational changes designed to reduce the cost and development time scales for new weapon systems and enhance the support of deployed, joint operations are set to radically alter military logistics. The main focus is on reducing logistic support costs while improving operational output. This requires the creation of a highly responsive and agile support chain with global reach. A key enabler in this process is the development of partnering arrangements between government and industry. Existing military aviation strategies have been shaped by a number of environmental factors, of an operational or budgetary nature, not shared with the commercial maintenance repair and overhaul sector. There is, nevertheless, scope for cost reduction through the employment of a variety of business improvement between government and industry.
Existing military aviation strategies have been snaped by a number of environmental factors, of an operational or budgetary nature, not shared with the commercial maintenance repair and tools and techniques, including process acceleration and improved materiel and production planning. However, the significant improvements required in the overall cost of ownership can only be delivered if the entire support chain is managed as a coherent entity and optimized end to end.
To date, strategies to shape the support chain have centred largely on outsourcing and rationalisation, relying on competition to deliver the best value for money. Partnering offers the prospect that the varied stakeholders can work effectively together to reduce logistic output costs and improve operational availability. While it is likely that the military logistic organization will continue to embrace depot level activities, they may well be on a smaller scale than at present and possibly managed under joint arrangements that partner the front-line, fleet managers, industry and in-house repair agencies. Whatever the outcome, the military customer will properly continue to be responsible for determining the required outputs, setting of priorities, and overall integration of the support chain.
The fundamental building block in achieving an effective partnering environment will be the creation of trust between the individual stakeholders. This requires a joint management approach, underpinned by spares-inclusive, long-term contracts with clear gain-share opportunities for all those involved. Success will be measured by a reduction in inventories, faster turn round of aircraft and high-value rotables, more rapid embodiment of modifications, quicker introduction of new technologies, a smaller expeditionary footprint, and greater operational output.
Maintaining military aircraft has always been a challenging and dynamic business, but today it is in the throes of radical change as air forces shape their logistic systems to post Cold War realities. Support strategies have had to be developed that address very different budgetary, technological, and operational requirements. This article examines these issues from a British perspective and draws heavily on the experience of the Defence Aviation Repair Agency (DARA), formed in April 1999, to manage the aviation maintenance and repair facilities of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Navy in support of the United Kingdom's (UK) Armed Forces.
Background
A number of recent defence initiatives have had a direct impact on the UK's military aviation maintenance support strategies. Many of the resulting organizational and process changes have yet to be fully realized but, together with the lessons identified in the Gulf War and more recently in the Balkans, are likely to transform the way in which airpower and military capability, in general, are delivered and weapons systems supported both at home and in the field.
Strategic Defence Review
The UK's Strategic Defence Review (SDR), completed in 1998, has been central to shaping future logistic support arrangements for the RAF. [1] The two elements bearing most directly on the existing logistic organization are the Smart Procurement Initiative (SPI)--which seeks to ensure future equipment procurement is faster, cheaper,--and better and the formation of the Defence Logistics Organization (DLO).
SPI requires a much closer working relationship with industry in the procurement of new weapons systems with an emphasis on a through-life approach. The intention is to provide greater scope for tradeoffs between military effectiveness, time. and the whole-life cost of the equipment. Partnering between government and industry is a key enabler, together with improved commercial practices and the creation of an integrated team responsible for project management. The intent is to deliver greater operational capability with improved in-service support and lower through-life costs. More than 130 integrated project teams (IPT) have been formed, bringing together different functions at appropriate points in a project including requirements, procurement, contracts, finance, and logistic staffs within the Ministry of Defense (MoD) with representatives from industry.
There are obvious parallels between the SPI and the US Department of Defense Acquisition Reform and Lean Aircraft initiatives that similarly seek to reduce the costs and length of new weapons programmes by matching best practice and seeking greater partnering with industry. [2]
Defence Logistic Organization
In the past, the individual Services have been largely responsible for their own logistic arrangements. Experience has shown that this does not provide for adequate support of forces engaged in the diverse, joint, deployed operations that characterise today's military environment. The joint commander of deployed forces must be able to exercise effective control over the entire support chain, which should, in turn, be flexible and capable of adjusting rapidly to new priorities. The fundamental change, however, has been the creation of a single, joint logistic organization under the Chief of Defence Logistics (CDL). CDL's remit is to provide support to the UK's Armed Forces that is effective, efficient, integrated, and responsive. The DLO has been structured to achieve these aims through an integrated logistic organization that provides a pan-defence overview allied to greatly strengthened logistics planning. It seeks implementation of best practice, rationalization of functions and capabilities, and the introduction of innovative ideas through the use of information technology and partnerships with industry.
The DLO comprises some 41,000 people, Service and civilian, based at more than 80 locations and with operating costs of nearly [pound]5bn (about 20 percent of the UK's total defence budget). The DLO has an important part to play in implementing the SPI, and 60 of the new IPTs have already formed within the organization. Additional initiatives are in hand, for example, to introduce lean principles and rationalise the provision of logistic support. Among the early steps has been the creation of the DARA to repair and overhaul all the UK's military aircraft, both fixed-wing and helicopters.
Environmental Factors
As important as these recent policy initiatives are proving, the fundamental shape of military aviation maintenance has been historically determined by a number of key environmental factors. While many of these also impact the commercial sector, the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) of military aircraft remains distinct in several respects.
Operational Drivers
Operational drivers have always played a significant part in determining military aviation support strategies. In the past, the focus has been more on brute force than subtle, flexible, and cost-conscious arrangements. While the Cold War lasted, this was an entirely reasonable and affordable approach.
Last year, the RAF was, on average, actively involved in five separate concurrent operations requiring the deployment of some 3,000-4,000 personnel and more than 70 aircraft. These have ranged from continuing support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Bosnia to active operations with the United Nations in West Africa. The focus on expeditionary warfare reflects the significant change in operational posture that has occurred in the last 10 years.
Expeditionary warfare has altered the demands placed on the RAF's logistic system. Rather than the large-scale attritional scenario of the Cold War, smaller, more mobile but highly capable forces are required to be deployed at short notice, possibly concurrently, anywhere in the world. Demanding time scales require logistic units to set up quickly with the minimum deployment footprint yet remain responsive to rapidly changing operational needs. This, in turn, requires the support chain to function in a more agile and coherent manner to ensure operations can commence rapidly and then continue at the required intensity.
Defence Output
Airpower is an increasingly important element in the delivery of military power. As the role of air forces has grown, so, too, has the need for greater weapons accuracy, effectiveness, and discrimination under all conditions and in all weathers. The requirement of modern, coalition warfare has added interoperability, minimum collateral damage, and survivability to the traditional mantra of flexibility, responsiveness, and reach. Increasingly, therefore, the emphasis is on sustaining the highest level of operational capability. This has huge implications for military aviation logistic organizations and has redoubled the emphasis on achieving faster modification embodiment and more responsive supply systems in order to be able to deploy and support the new technologies.
Aging Fleets
A major factor to be addressed in managing support costs is the steady increase in the age of military aircraft fleets. The average age of aircraft in the US Air Force (USAF) front-line fleet is currently around 20 years but is set to rise to nearly 30 years over the next decade, notwithstanding the number of new aircraft types planned to be introduced. Indeed, the average age of the oldest aircraft type in the inventory will exceed 50 years by 2015. [3] Although substantially smaller, the average age of the RAF's front-line fleet, presently around 20 years, is also set to grow (Figure 1).
With increasing age comes increased risk of structural damage, corrosion, and general wear of systems such as utilities, flying controls, and landing gear. The effort to reduce support costs becomes an even greater challenge with an aging fleet where maintenance is dominated by parts obsolescence, fatigue, and an increasing proportion of emergent work driven by unforeseen airframe and engine problems.
Technology
Advances in technology provide the military planner with a significant challenge. The pace of change is accelerating with much of the impetus coming from the commercial sector. This provides obvious difficulties in sustaining future military capability and complicates the task of predicting where technologies will lead. Accordingly, one of the key aims of the SPI is to allow operational capability to be sustained through technological insertion programmes.
On the positive side, new technology is now offering significantly improved reliabilities, notably, but not exclusively, in the avionics field. It has to be added, however, that this can also serve to exacerbate the obsolescence problem, as electronic components are rapidly superseded and no longer supported by the marketplace.
Modification Embodiment
As technology surges ahead and fleets get older, so modification of in-service weapon systems has assumed steadily greater importance. In 1997-1998, the MoD spent [pound]1bn (some 12 percent of all equipment-related expenditure) modifying in-service equipment to sustain existing capabilities and meet emerging or new operational threats. An increasing proportion of aircraft downtimes is utilised to modify and upgrade weapons systems. Unfortunately, the idea of sustaining a single modification standard across an aircraft fleet has largely proved impracticable in the face of limited resources and time constraints. Fleets within fleets have emerged as modifications have taken years, if not decades, to be fully realized. For the Tornado (Figure 2), the fastest modifications have taken 4 years from development to fleet embodiment and the slowest 12 years. [4] Clearly, such delays have significant operational, maintenance, and training implications.
A secondary, but important, aspect of the increasing pace of modification activity is that it has seen a modest shift from airframe and engine work in favour of electrical and avionic activity. Since the latter often focuses on the cockpit, where access is limited, scheduling and planning have become even more critical for achieving rapid turn-round times.
Budgets
Over the last 10 years defence budgets have fallen in line with a smaller front line and reducing uniformed numbers. In the case of the UK's Armed Forces, the defence budget has fallen from a little more than 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in 1985 to less than 3 percent today (Figure 3). In the same period, the size of the RAF has shrunk from a total of 90,000 uniformed people to some 50,000. Sustaining a credible and operationally effective front line under these circumstances represents a major challenge, made all the more difficult by the tendency for defence prices to increase faster than general inflation in the economy.
Given the continuing pressures on the defence budget and the size and cost of the MoD's logistic organization, it will not be a surprise to learn that CDL is committed to reducing the output costs of logistic support by 20 percent over the next 5 years. It is planned that these efficiencies will, in turn, help free the resources needed to sustain the front line's operational capabilities.
Potential for Cost Reduction
The effective logistic support of a front-line squadron is an expensive business, involving a number of key stakeholders and embracing a variety of activities. The total operating budget for the support elements of the RAF's Tornado fleet, comprising more than 300 aircraft, is in excess of [pound]1bn a year, of which the cash cost--excluding fuel, engines, and weapons--totals more than [pound]700M. There are at least five separate organizations with a direct involvement in the management of the Tornado support chain (Figure 4). [5]
For those unfamiliar with the terms employed, the 1st/2d Line describes the engineering and maintenance activities carried out by the front line, within the competence of the operational unit (equivalent to the base and intermediate levels of the USAF maintenance model). Third Line (depot level), in this case the DARA, comprises those activities carried out within the Service but outside 1St/2d Line's competence and, therefore, is generally located off base. The 4th Line embraces all other maintenance activities carried out by external agencies and is, in effect, synonymous with industry.
If these activities are analysed by process, the importance of upgrade work, as a proportion of the overall support costs, becomes readily apparent (Figure 5). While the current midlife upgrade programme for the Tornado undoubtedly influences the pattern of resource allocation, the picture is not radically different to that found in other front-line fleets.
Key Enablers
There are a variety of enablers critical to the effective management of military MRO. Many of these involve the employment of tools and techniques already widely used within the commercial MRO sector. However, because of operational drivers, progress toward best practice has been mixed and implementation patchy.
Software Solutions
The introduction of electronic business systems for military aviation maintenance has been relatively slow compared to the pace in the wider aerospace market. Capacity planning and work scheduling tools, such as Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), have been increasingly introduced in the last 5 years but are still rare in the military maintenance environment. This applies equally to the use of e-business tools which, while still modest, is growing rapidly in the private sector. In the United Kingdom, the MoD has recently initiated the Defence Electronic Commerce Service (DECS) to assist the DLO to exploit the huge opportunities offered by e-business and to facilitate supply chain integration.
Reduced Turn-Round Times
Shorter turn-round times for maintenance and modification activities not only offer the prospect of higher availability levels but also attract lower overheads and enhanced production efficiencies. Thus, greater operational capability can be purchased at a lower overall cost to the defence budget. This virtuous circle, however, requires very different organizational and cultural behaviours on the part of the supply chain stakeholders. Inevitably, there will be greater vulnerability to the impact of poor planning or the late arrival of spares, modification kits, and repair information.
Process Acceleration
Process acceleration is central to many of the improvements required to be able to deliver improved logistic support and lower output costs. There is huge potential for improvement across all maintenance processes and levels. Process acceleration seeks to minimize turn-round times, reduce waste, eliminate waiting time, and drive down costs. Within the DARA, notable successes have included reducing the turn- round time for overhaul of the Lynx helicopter main gearbox from 131 days to just 16 days (Figure 6) and for overhaul of the RB 199 high-pressure Compressor, fitted to the Tornado, from 336 hours to 55 hours.
Similar achievements have been delivered in the electronics area and on aircraft maintenance where the current Tornado F3 2000 modification programme has seen a 25 percent reduction in the turn-round time, the elimination of some 600 hours of waste, and introduction of better working conditions through a variety of housekeeping initiatives. It is anticipated that aircraft scheduled maintenance down times can be reduced by 20-40 percent over the next 18 months. The capacity so released can be employed to accelerate the overall maintenance programme and achieve earlier fleet modification embodiment to increase repayment work or to facilitate a reduction in infrastructure costs through rationalisation. [6]
Additional benefits from these initiatives include reduced work in progress; greater ownership on the part of the work force of the processes involved; improved visibility of the key enablers, particularly spares; and the potential for significantly reduced inventories (including high-value rotables) across the entire supply chain while delivering improved availability. To provide some feel for the scale of the potential savings, it should be noted that the DLO's current avionics and electronics inventory is alone valued at [pound]3.2bn of which [pound]2.4bn are reparable, while the overall aviation-related inventory is probably closer to [pound]8bn.
Continuous Improvement
The techniques used to deliver process acceleration also form the basis for continuous improvement programmes intended to sustain the delivery of lower support costs. The major aerospace companies already sponsor such initiatives built around a variety of improvement tools and techniques and waste reduction principles. It seems probable that, as partnering arrangements find wider application, so industry-sponsored programmes such as BAE Systems' Supply Excellence Programme will find wider use in military aviation maintenance management. [7]
Spares and Repair Information
A perennial problem faced in the struggle to achieve turn-round times for aircraft maintenance programmes and military MRO, in general, is the availability of spares, modification kits, and repair information. Spares-related problems account for some 38 percent of the delays currently experienced by the DARA's fixed-wing aircraft programmes (Figure 7). Other significant causes of delay are the late arrival of repair information, inadequate bay support, and engineering problems (emergent work, flight-test failures, and so forth).
Addressing these issues requires a greater emphasis on planning and materiel management within the repair organization in order to provide the wider support chain with credible and timely information on spares requirements. Much of this work can be achieved some time in advance (at least 18 months), and while there are obvious limits as to what can be achieved in the face of procurement lead times and fleet-wide shortages, it is possible to achieve a significant reduction in spares-related delays, particularly if a way can be found to enable the supply base to work together and break away from the traditional consumption-driven approach to spares provisioning.
Support Chain Strategies
Over recent years, a variety of strategies have been employed to shape the military aviation support chain, including competition, outsourcing, and privatization. All these remain important tools for delivering better value for money in the provision of logistic support and have been implemented within the RAF and USAF maintenance organizations with varying degrees of success. However, it has to be said that none have successfully addressed the fundamental need to manage the entire support chain in a manner that balances lower output costs with enhanced military capability.
Part of the difficulty is that there has been a continuing debate, on both sides of the Atlantic, about the strategic need for government-owned military aviation repair facilities. This has tended to cloud the issue and frustrate agreement on appropriate strategies. A further complication has been the development of innovative contracting strategies, such as Contractor Logistic Support and Prime Vendor Support that seek to address the logistic needs of individual weapon systems. While these total support packages have undoubtedly had an impact on the wider military aviation support chain, their scope has been intentionally narrow and invariably lacking in any overall strategic concept.
As more capability is imbedded in a smaller number of weapons platforms, it becomes all the more important that the highest level of availability is sustained with the lowest possible maintenance downtime. While the individual enablers described earlier are clearly important to more effective maintenance and supply performance, significant operational gain can be delivered only if the entire support chain, across all maintenance levels, is managed as an entity. Logistic arrangements can then be optimized to lower overall support costs and deliver a sustainable operational output. Before looking at how this might be achieved in the future, it may be helpful to look in a little more detail at the strategies employed to date.
Rationalisation
Considerable rationalisation across the military aviation support chain has already occurred. In the last 10 years, the RAF has closed or amalgamated six out of eight logistic depots. Even so, there remains scope for further rationalisation of maintenance facilities in order to derive efficiencies of scale and exploit available synergies. There are self-evident limits to this process, but it seems likely that further rationalisation will occur as integrated logistic support arrangements are put in place.
Even where maintenance activities remain in house, there is a potential for reshaping the logistic organization across the various levels as has been achieved through the USAF two-level maintenance initiative. This has successfully removed a great deal of the intermediate-level capability with a commensurate decrease in the deployment footprint and greatly improved supply chain performance. [8]
Privatization
Total privatization has, to date, remained unattractive in the face of strong strategic reasons to retain an organic (in-house) capability. These have included the need for a surge and reinforcement capability, the provision of an intelligent customer role, maintaining a benchmark against which to judge industrial performance, and the avoidance of a monopoly situation. Thus, while value for money will always be critical, it seems likely that a proportion of on-aircraft military maintenance will continue to be undertaken in-house, just as the majority (some 73 percent) of airline maintenance is conducted in house. [9]
Competition
Competition in the allocation of specific maintenance contracts has been widely and successfully employed, although there are lingering arguments about the fairness of the process (the level-playing-field question). Even so, it is probable that an increasing proportion of off-and-on aircraft maintenance will be competed, although it may prove more effective for partners to agree where the work is actually undertaken rather than allowing a head-to-head fight determine the outcome.
Outsourcing and Contractorization
The economic advantages of outsourcing and contractorization at a time of declining budgets are self-evident. As a result, the level of outsourcing is growing both in the general logistic area and in the direct support of combat operations. Competition, privatization, and the increasing employment of innovative contracting strategies mean that, in the future a significant number of contractor people will be engaged in the delivery of military logistics, including aviation maintenance. [10]
Partnering
While partnering is perhaps the most immature strategy deployed so far, it is perceived as the one offering with the greatest potential. Given the range of stakeholders with direct responsibility for or influence over the supply chain, partnering appears to offer the only practical mechanism to achieve the necessary oversight and control. Of course, this also requires that the proper incentives be put in place. Reducing support costs is as much about changing behaviour as about changing processes. Partnering is critical to achieving the necessary changes in the relationship between customer and supplier and the delivery of cost reduction, better service, and an overall improvement in effectiveness and quality.
Two basic forms of partnering have been developed by the MoD: Project Partnering involving individual projects, a particular service, or an aspect of equipment support and Strategic Partnering involving the building of a long-term relationship to develop technological and strategic initiatives for the generation of income and shared efficiency savings. The aim is to construct a more flexible relationship with the private sector, rather than replacing the traditional contracting and competition processes.
Project Partnering
A good example of Project Partnering is the recent contract between the Tornado IPT and the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) for the provision of Tornado taileron and rudder actuators. The OEM is responsible for the entire support chain from 2d to 4th Line and is contracted to deliver a level of service defined by an achieved flying rate. As a result, aircraft-on-ground rates have fallen, and availability significantly improved. The DARA acts as a subcontractor to the OEM, sustaining an organic capability while contributing directly to a more effective and responsive support arrangement that has achieved real operational benefits. DARA is also acting as a subcontractor to BAE Systems on several aircraft modification programmes, such as the Hawk Fuselage Replacement Programme, won in open competition with industry. It is probable that an increasing proportion of DARA's work will be delivered under these or similar arrangements.
Strategic Partnering
The formation of the DLO has seen the creation of a number of joint MoD/industry tiger teams to review the support of entire weapon systems, classes of equipment, and specific supply chain activities. These ad hoc, multidisciplinary teams have been created to provide a focussed and aggressive review of support strategies drawing on best practice and seeking innovative solutions. The Tornado Tiger Team--comprising representatives from the IPT, BAE Systems, the frontline, and the DARA--has recently identified ways to deliver more than 20 percent savings in life-cycle costs for the Tornado fleet over the next 4 years. The intention is to create a partnered support solution built on a joint management structure involving all the key stakeholders. The contracting arrangements have yet to be finalized, and other stakeholders may yet join the partnering relationship, but pilot projects have already commenced to confirm the viability of the proposed arrangements. Areas to be examined include process acceleration across a range of high-value rotables, improved strip-to-work ratios for on-aircraft maintenance, integrated software support, joint fleet management, more rapid modification embodiment, and faster provision of technical information and other post-design services.
Future Strategies
It is clear that future military aviation maintenance support strategies will be determined largely by their impact on operational output and cost of ownership. Although it is really too early to claim a significant success for the partnering concept, it is difficult to see an alternative in delivering the necessary efficiencies and end-to-end optimization of the support chain. Contractors are likely, therefore, to undertake an increasing proportion of logistic activities, both at home and abroad. This raises the obvious question of what maintenance responsibilities will remain with the military.
Military Maintenance
Operational maintenance will certainly continue to be performed by military logisticians, as will direct support to the front line. It is possible that these activities will be performed under joint or even coalition arrangements, but they will be undertaken by warfighters. Intermediate- and depot-level maintenance will increasingly be consolidated into a single activity, but it is not clear to what extent the government will continue to own the relevant facilities. That said, there is risk in simply allowing the competitive process to determine the outcome. It is not unreasonable to suggest that, unless the government is able to bring some organic MRO capability to the partnering process, the partnership will not prosper.
All of this tends to suggest that the military logistic organization will continue to embrace depot-level activities, particularly where legacy systems are involved or where strategic concerns remain extant. It is also arguable that 3d Line is inherently better placed to undertake the growing number of life-extension and upgrade programmes. Whatever specific arrangements emerge, these activities will form one element in an integrated, responsive, and agile support chain focussed on delivering the highest level of operational output. Overall management will be exercised jointly under arrangements that partner the front-line, fleet managers, OEMs, and in-house repair agencies.
Success Factors
Planning, contracting for outputs, the setting of priorities, and the overall integration of the support chain will properly remain the responsibility of the military customer. The emphasis will be on spares-inclusive, long-term arrangements with clear gain-share opportunities. Success will be measured by:
* Reduced inventories,
* Faster turn-round times of aircraft and rotables,
* More rapid embodiment of modifications,
* Quicker introduction of new technologies,
* Fewer fleets within fleets,
* Better strip-to-work ratios,
* Lower support chain costs,
* Less maintenance manpower,
* Smaller expeditionary footprint, and
* Greater operational output.
Risks
As with any new strategy, there are risks. The fundamental building block in determining a successful partnership with industry is trust. As one commentator has observed, "Trust is the currency that makes the supply chain work. If it's not there, the supply chain falls apart." [11] As support chains are more closely integrated and maintenance strategies are better aligned, the more vulnerable is the logistic organization to the impact of inappropriate behaviour. In the past, the risk might have been minimized and resilience enhanced by providing duplicate or alternative in-house capabilities backed up by large inventories. This is neither affordable nor compatible with today's operational needs. In the future, therefore, the main safeguard will be the creation of an environment in which government and industry, both primes and subcontractors, can function coherently, effectively, and harmoniously.
Conclusions
Geostrategic, economic, and technological changes will make support of air operations, both at home and overseas, increasingly dependent on the flexibility and responsiveness of the military logistic organization. This requires the creation of a highly integrated and agile support chain with global reach. The most promising strategy to achieve these aims is based on a joint management approach, teaming the public and private sectors, under long-term partnering arrangements. While it is probable that organic military maintenance capabilities will be retained, particularly to address life-extension and fleet-upgrade requirements, the alliance partners will largely determine the size and shape of the military logistic organization as part of their wider responsibilities for shaping the overall support chain. Success will be measured by a reduction in inventories, faster turn-round times, more rapid modification embodiment, swifter deployment of new technologies, a smaller expeditionary footprint, lower support costs, and greater operational output.
This strategy requires more, however, than the application of just-in-time principles. It embraces commercial express transportation; innovative contracting arrangements including spares-inclusive packages; the application of commercial IT solutions to support materiel planning and inventory management; collective decision making involving all stake-holders; an overriding emphasis on operational output; and most important, a high level of trust between all the parties. These changes may well result in smaller organic military repair facilities and the greater use of contractors at all maintenance levels, including overseas. Most important, it will require the military aviation maintenance organization to move away from an internal focus on efficiency and utilization to a holistic approach that puts customer needs, in the form of operational output, first and foremost.
As the SDR concluded, "The military effectiveness of modern armed forces depends more than ever on the quality of their logistic and other support arrangements, where necessary adopting modern methods and best practice." [12]
Air Commodore Dye is assigned to the RAF Maintenance Group Defence Agency at St Athan Barry, United Kingdom. He is a frequent contributor to the Air force Journal of Logistics.
Notes
(1.) The Strategic Defence Review--Supporting Essays, Stationary Office, London, 1998.
(2.) The Lean Aircraft Initiative, sponsored by the USAF, seeks to half cycle times and costs of future weapons systems while greatly improving performance. AW&ST, 3 Jun 96 and 28 Jul 97.
(3.) Lt Gen William P Hallin, "The Challenge of Sustaining Older Aircraft," Air Force Journal of Logistics, Vol XXII, Summer 1998, 1-2.
(4.) NATO Report, Modifying Defence Equipment, Stationary Office, 1998.
(5.) It should be noted that these figures represent operating costs and not budgetary responsibilities.
(6.) The USAF Lean Logistics initiative has successfully applied similar techniques to reduce component turn-round times, notably in the avionic and propulsion areas.
(7.) The Supply Excellence Programme (SEP), which has been developed from a variety of quality management models and industry standards (such as the Baldridge and European Foundation for Quality Management Models), seeks to enhance the business performance of BAE Systems' supplier base through the employment of a business excellence-based assessment, statistical process control, and improvement tools and techniques. Some 75 percent of suppliers, by bought-out value, participate in the SEP.
(8.) Two-Level Maintenance (TLM) and the associated Lean Logistics initiative have reduced the average repair cycle times for typical avionics line replaceable units from 17 to 9 days. Overhaul & Maintenance, Jan 97, 55-57. The application of TLM principles and associated efforts have reduced the outload requirement to support a squadron of F-22 aircraft by two-thirds compared to the F-15, "Unlikely Partners: Two-Level Logistics and the Air Force Gold Programme," Air Force Journal of Logistics, Vol XX, Spring 1996, 1-4.
(9.) This compares, however, to the 90 percent performed in house in the 1970s, AW&ST, 30 Aug 99.
(10.) Col S. J. Zamparelli, "Contractors on the Battlefield," Air Force Journal of Logistics, Vol XXIII, Fall 1999, 8-17.
(11.) AW&ST, 13 Sep 99, 75-82.
(12.) SDR Defence White Paper, 1998, 209.
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