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Maintainers' initiative saves time

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Divine Cox
  • 62nd Airlift Wing Public Affairs
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. -- --  Every C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in the Air Force has miles of wire, thousands of sensors and hundreds of dials, switches and indicators.

Each section of aircraft maintainers has their specific tools that they need daily to accomplish maintenance on an aircraft, but when those tools are not in the correct place, time is wasted to go retrieve the tool that is needed to get the job done.

After the results of a unit climate assessment surfaced, identifying this problem, a couple of Airmen from the 62nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron took initiative to improve the tool box process.

"A lot of Airmen were not happy with the old tool boxes," said Staff Sgt. Stephen Burns, 62nd AMXS electrical and environmental systems craftsman. "Important tools that we use on a daily basis were missing and we had to stop what we were doing to go get the tool."

A lack of communication was one factor that played a key role in all the frustrations.

"Tools were removed from the tool box without us knowing," said Staff Sgt. John Drum, 62nd AMXS electrical and environmental systems journeyman. "Too much time was being wasted to run back and forth to grab tools."

Burns and Drum have been at the 62nd AMXS the longest out of all the Airmen and knew exactly what tools were needed to be in the tool boxes.

The new process saves man hours by lessening travel to and from the aircraft from missing tools. The old tool box was lacking specialized tools, but the new tool box has all the necessary tools needed to complete the job the first time.

"I've been doing E&E for a while, so I knew what tools were needed on- hand to make our job a lot easier and make things work a lot more smoothly," said Burns. "So I spoke with my leadership about making a change to the tool boxes and they let me take the lead on it."

Drum said once his leadership was on board with the change, he had to work with the Composite Tool Kit area to make the changes to the boxes.

CTK is a controlled area where all the tools are kept for maintainers to check out tools and return them.

"It has taken almost a year to get this process fixed," said Burns. "I was willing to keep pushing for this change because of the significant impact it would have on getting the work done."

The 62nd AMXS Airmen work around the clock to ensure every aircraft is functioning properly and remain ready to keep Team McChord's mission going.

"Time is money," said Drum. "This initiative saved on average, more than 30 minutes of travel time to and from CTK. Every box has the tools we use the most in them and less trips are needed to be taken going back and forth to CTK now."