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AMC and the Air Force Inspection System (AFIS)

  • Published
  • By COL KYLE VOIGT
  • AMC Deputy Inspector General
Summer 2014 --  The AFIS TOP 10 for Successful Implementation

Special thanks to SSgt Austin May, 100 ARW/PA, who provided all the creative artwork for this article.

"The new AFIS is the best change we've seen in the inspection business in 30 years!" said Brig Gen Steve Arquiette, the departing Inspector General for Air Mobility Command and the driving force behind AMC making inspections more relevant, value-added tools for commanders over the past three years. The AFIS and its new Unit Effective Inspection (UEI) process are critical to future USAF successes, as they provide wing commanders the tools to evaluate and ensure mission readiness and compliance across the enterprise under a much more effective and efficient approach.

When the program goes "FOC" on October 1, 2014, it will mark a huge change in how commanders look at their role in evaluating overall wing effectiveness. Yet, there's still a lot to do before we inculcate the change into our Airmen culture. Take a few minutes to enjoy this humorous look at ten things we can do to improve AFIS implementation across the AF enterprise.

    #1. "Painting the grass green" has driven Airmen crazy for decades of inspections. Wasting time on menial, non-value-added tasks--for an artificial appearance of effectiveness--is not what we should be doing. If the work you do is making your role more effective, more efficient, or more economical, then you should continue to put in the hours. But if you find yourself rebuilding the same continuity book that was handed to you a year ago, then use that time to find some real improvement areas instead.

    #2. When did an IG visit start causing wings to stop making improvements? The risk of the IG seeing us actually fixing something often drove us away from doing the right thing at the right time for our Airmen. By showing the IG you can self-detect problems, you are improving your mission readiness ... and UEI grade.

    #3. In the past, the formula for an inspection grade sometimes received more attention than the performance itself. The AFIS relies heavily on an organization's ability to self-assess at a healthy, critical level. UEI grades are about long-term effectiveness ... not simply whether the wing can generate 1-2 weeks of heavily rehearsed compliance. When it comes to getting inspected, be confident, be enthusiastic, and be motivated to show your stuff. But please ... leave the grading to the IG.

    #4. MICT is easy if you let it be easy. The self-assessment checklists (SACs) in MICT provide a list of the most important, highest-risk compliance areas for your function. They do not relieve you of all the "will, shall, or must" mandates in AFI guidance. They should give you a valuable way to show your chain of command that you are handling those critical functions every day. That's why you're expected to update SACs within 5 days of a change in compliance. MICT should be a living database of compliance awareness--not a new bureaucracy all on its own.

    #5. Do you know what your wing commander's "dashboard" is? It's not some idealized Excel spreadsheet that captures every metric in a wing. It is your commander's entire battle rhythm of reports, meetings and decisions. Every wing--just like every major weapon system in our inventory--is unique. If a commander is focused exclusively on one or two instruments, he or she could miss the big picture.

    #6. Gen Welsh recently said, "If it doesn't make sense, stop doing it!" But he wasn't talking about doing whatever you want just because you don't like AF guidance. Our first role is to know our guidance inside and out so that we can truly understand when it is unnecessarily hampering our efforts. When that takes place, we're expected to evaluate and accept risk by using waivers to current guidance and by proposing permanent changes in order to make the next version of guidance more useful.

    #7. "Improving the unit" means a lot more than just making things easier for yourself. If you incorporate more people and processes into your improvements, you will see better results that get buy-in and last longer. By leading those projects yourself, you can expand the influence of your own team by advocating what is right for the enterprise.

    #8. Continuous improvement is healthy ... especially if you use methods like those in the AFSO21 playbook. But don't let great ideas get bogged down in the process itself. Doing a "6 S" event (Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, Sustain, Safety) is a great tool, but if it's the only way you are using AFSO21, you need to look harder at your processes, and allow a facilitator to help you with your efforts.

    #9. Every Fortune 500 company knows that finding weak areas is a major key to fixing them. But the military tends to think "Red is Dead!" instead. As we shrink budgets and manpower, we have to accept that some "red" in our metrics is normal. If you can accept that--instead of automatically associating red with failure--you are much closer to getting your activity resourced appropriately.

    #10. Here's the "foot-stomper"! The "new IG" serves as the true eyes and ears of the commander, who uses that awareness to improve the organization. "We Inspect to Improve" is not just the CSAF's view of the IG ... it is the way we do business under the AFIS. The IG are your teammates--if there is something that needs fixing in the organization and they don't know about it, then YOU don't know about it.