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AMC hosts AFSO 21 Process Council

  • Published
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. --  Senior leaders from across the service convened here June 2-3 for the quarterly Air Force Process Council meeting, reviewing both the progress and future of Air Force Air Force Smart Operations 21 transformational efforts.

The council is charged with guiding changes in processes in order to improve force effectiveness and coordinate ways to replicate successful change projects across the service.

The event included roundtable discussions, special presentations of improvement initiatives in progress-- Air Force inspection and compliance processes; reducing aviation fuel consumption; and access to health care; and tours to show the results of work done within Air Mobility Command. The overarching theme was focused on integration - specifically, ensuring that Airmen share good ideas and improve upon them through cross-talk with others.
Air Mobility Command, which hosted the two-day event, used the opportunity to share more than two dozen of its AFSO 21 success stories from across the command.

These included an initiative by the 60th Medical Group at Travis Air Force Base to more efficiently allocate operating room time for surgeries. This increased operating room use from 73 to more than 90 percent, and reduced the average wait time for patients needing orthopedic surgery from 90 to 30 days. The group now handles an additional 36 cases a month, providing more effective care to Airmen and returning them to duty sooner. Annually, they now perform more than $1.86 million in additional surgeries.

Another success shared was an initiative by the Little Rock AFB Engine Regional Repair Center. Applying lean processes, the center's redesigned shop decreased C-130 engine build time from 17 to 12 days, decreased deficiencies by 24 percent, and now produces more reliable engines. Production is now also aligned with spares requirements, which avoids $4.2 million annually in "over production."

"Both of these initiatives originated locally, employing AFSO21 principles at the lowest level," said Col. Chris Hair, AMC AFSO21 director. "We are now looking out Air Force-wide to see where those ideas might be applied."

With skyrocketing energy costs, fuel efficiency has become a top priority for the Air Force. AMC has tackled this on several fronts, including scheduling aircraft on the most-efficient flight routes; improving resource utilization through more accurate flight planning, performing more fuel-efficient ground operations, and increasing the use of flight simulators for training. It's also reduced the takeoff weight of mobility aircraft by removing equipment that isn't needed for day-to-day operations and eliminating standard ramp fuel loads, so aircraft only fly with the amount of fuel required for specific missions.

With the KC-135, the command has realized more than $63 million in annual savings by applying these weight reduction measures. This initiative is now expanding to all AMC aircraft.