Dover colonel helps Charleston lean checks

Published Aug. 23, 2007
By Tech. Sgt. Kevin Wallace
436th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The 436th Maintenance Group commander, Col. Robert Hamm, headed south Aug. 6 through Aug. 10 and kicked off 'lean' initiatives at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C.

Charleston chose Dover AFB because of its command-wide reputation for having made huge strides in Air Force Smart Operations 21 programs over the past three years.

"When the 'lean' initiatives began to spin up around the Air Force, Dover immediately took off with several programs and has led the Air Mobility Command since," said Colonel Hamm. "I have been privileged to be a part of many initiatives here."

In addition to the initiatives he implemented at Dover, the colonel went on temporary duty and assisted Charleston AFB in reducing their ability to perform Home Station Checks by 11 hours per check.

HSC is a thorough three-day inspection done every 120 days on an aircraft while it's at home station.

Flightline maintenance begins this process by preparing the aircraft for a wash, explained Charleston AFB officials in a news release.
Next, a contractor cleans the aircraft at the wash rack and it is later towed to the HSC hangar for the start of the inspection process. After the inspections and repairs in HSC, it's towed back to the flightline for engine runs. Once the entire process is complete, the C-17 is given back to the aircraft maintenance squadron and scheduled for its next flight.

Prior to the lean event, the HSC process took more than 100 hours to complete. However, after the lean initiatives were implemented, the lean team was able to cut 11 hours out of the overall process. The lean team has action plans to cut down more than 40 additional hours in the future.

To help support the event, Charleston AFB called on Colonel Hamm to be the event's lean facilitator.

Dover AFB has made huge strides in lean projects during the past three years and he helped bring their 'lean' knowledge to Charleston AFB, said officials. Colonel Hamm was instrumental and helped the Charleston team set and reach goals during the event.

"Colonel Hamm brought a standard for us to follow," said 1st Lt. Vince Cammarano, 437 Maintenance Squadron Maintenance Flight assistant commander. "He brought a lot to the table and did a great job at leading us in this lean event."

Before the lean event, many things caused waste and generated extra hours because the C-17 was just sitting and not being inspected or repaired, said officials. One issue was the way damaged gear doors were handled. Previously, the aircraft structural maintenance shop received the bad gear doors after the aircraft was washed. Repairing bad gear doors was a process that took an average of 42 hours. Now, the doors are removed earlier and this provides aircraft structural maintenance Airmen an additional 14 hours of repair time to provide a non-delayed product for HSC.

"For me, this whole lean event was very educational," said Senior Airman Cory Tash, 437 MXS crew chief. "It was great being able to stand back and look at processes and figure out how to apply improvements."

Other improvements made were the organization and location of tools and machinery throughout the HSC hangar to make them more readily available for Airmen to work on C-17s. Before the process was leaned, Airmen averaged 864 footsteps to get equipment, but now with a different layout of available tools and machinery it only takes 291 steps to keep C-17s readily available.

Dover AFB made tremendous efforts to help the men and women working on Charleston AFB, said officials.

"The team we worked with was nothing short of tremendous ... there was a great amount of effort from everyone," said Lieutenant Cammarano. "So far, we've saved more than 1,000 hours of aircraft availability to America and to the war fighter."

(Airman 1st Class Nicholas Pilch, 437th Airlift Wing Public Affairs contributed to this article)

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