C-17 maintainers going paperless

Published March 23, 2016
By Roland Balik
436th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. -- The C-17A Globemaster III is leading the way for Air Mobility Command's push to go to paperless aircraft technical manuals by using an Interactive Electronic Technical Manual on laptop or tablet e-tools. This will be used by aircraft maintainers to perform organizational level maintenance or what is commonly referred to as O-level maintenance.

Previous C-17 maintenance technical manuals consisted of physical paper copies and electronic PDFs with limited interactive capabilities.

With Dover AFB being the last active duty C-17 base on their list, a five-member team from the Air Force Materiel Command, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, C-17 Technical Order Management Agency, Robins AFB, Georgia, provided Dover Globemaster III maintainers with classroom instruction on the current version of the C-17 IETM February 22-25, 2016.

During the four days, 13 four-hour classes were provided to over 140 C-17 active duty, Reserve and civilian maintainers from various specialties, covering the C-17 IETM, a full and inclusive suite of O-level maintenance in one single electronic technical order. This includes a specific set of technical orders consisting of job guides, fault isolation, illustrated parts breakdown and more.

"This is Air Mobility Command's pilot program for a S1000D specification IETM," said Van Holland, Boeing Company C-17 Lifecycle Support. "Here they are used to using PDFs or papers to perform their maintenance actions on the aircraft. The IETM provides an interactive intelligent suite that allows them to use such things as data applicability in linking and using that intelligence to go from one product to another seamlessly."

Now being increasingly adopted for use by military and civilian aircraft, S1000D is a data specification based on the use of storing information in the smallest amount called a data module used to accomplish a specific task or emergency procedure.

"The maintainers taking this class will have the upfront knowledge and will understand how to use this new technology in this new program which the overall goal is mission readiness," said Holland. "That mission readiness comes from quality and efficiency, this tool provides both."

The IETM incorporates the use of hyperlinks to allow the user to navigate through a single or multiple technical orders by using a viewer installed on any e-tool device.

"In this instance, about 680 books are made into one technical order for the maintainers to use," said John Barrett, AFLCMC C-17 TOMA IETM equipment specialist. "The government spends a lot of money on printing and this will alleviate that plus it will allow us to get changes out to the field faster."

One goal of the C-17 TOMA has been to listen to the recommendations of their main stakeholder, the C-17 maintainer and to make the IETM and its viewer better by taking input from maintainers attending a maintenance symposium.

"A lot of people saw the first iteration of the IETM and they hated it," said Barrett. "This IETM is not for us, it's for the maintainer."

Keeping e-tools up-to-date with the most current C-17 IETM is a constant process.

"Boeing provides a disk to us monthly with all of the new changes," said Doug MacMillan, International Logistics Corporation C-17 applications engineer. "That disk is distributed out to the Validation and Verification department and reviews all of the changes to make sure those changes are accurate."

After the disk containing the new authoritative IETM has been reviewed, the disk is sent to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, where the primary server is located. The primary server sends out the new authoritative IETM to servers located at C-17 bases and each base server updates laptops and tablets connected to the LAN in a dock and lock cabinet.

"The base servers go out and compare their catalog to the catalog at the primary server and make any necessary changes to synchronize it with the authoritative source," said MacMillan. "In addition to that, the individual working e-tools, checks the base server at least twice a day to make sure they are updated and make that synchronization process as necessary."

Located in the 736th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron support section, a combination of laptop and tablet e-tools totaling 60, are maintained, stored and updated in lock and dock cabinets when not in use by maintainers.

"We ensure that the e-tools stay connected to the base's local area network when they are not being used on the flight line and continue to get their updates," said Master Sgt. Richard Martinez, 736th AMXS support section chief.

Working with Boeing, the C-17 TOMA is continuously working to improve the operability and capabilities of the C-17 IETM to help maintainers use their e-tools.

"This new IETM will allow maintainers to perform maintenance in a timely and safe manner," said Holland.