News

Flight Service Center moves to the flight line

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman William Johnson
  • 436th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  The Continuous Process Improvement initiative, or CPI, has already brought about several changes across Dover AFB. Now, the 436th Logistics Readiness Squadron and the 436th Maintenance Group have seen the benefits of when two organizations come together to fix a common problem.

In early April 2016, the 436th LRS's Flight Service Center moved from their warehouse in building 639 to their new permanent location on the flight line in hangar 714. This allows maintenance Airmen a much quicker and easier avenue to the supply section within LRS.

Lt. Col. Todd Walker, 436th LRS commander, said this allows LRS Airmen to directly work with and build better work relationships with Dover maintainers.

"The key with us is when things are due in for maintenance, the parts have to come over to the flight service center," said Walker. "Before when the flight service center was over in building 639, folks actually had to drive all the way over from the flight line. But now we are on the flight line so they can go straight to us there."

The move was the culmination of planning and working to reduce inventory discrepancies within the wheel and tire section of the 436th MXG.

Kenneth Jones, 436th MXG CPI director, said CPI helped to bring together subject matter experts from both the 436th MXG and 436th LRS to brainstorm ideas and figure out how to fix inventory issues. After reviewing the processes of inventorying, problems were quickly identified.

"What we saw is that there was a lack of communication and a lot of opportunity for failure between the physical location of the wheels and LRS having to come over and do inventories because of constant adjustments," said Jones. "At one point, we were supposed to have 104 tires on-hand but the system showed us at negative 52, so there was 156 item disparity in the process."

One of the proposed solutions was to move the flight service center closer to wheel and tire section, that way the Airmen from then 436th LRS would have better eyes on of the inventory and maintainers would have easier access to the flight service center. Hangar 714 was ultimately decided as the future home of the flight service center.

"Hangar 714 is centrally located across the flight line," said Jones. "If you had to draw a line, it is right down the middle so it made the most sense based on its physical location."

The wheel and tire section is just the first section of maintenance to benefit from the flight service center move. Master Sgt. Bridgette DeJesus, 436th LRS maintenance support superintendent, said heavily used and requested parts will soon be available from the flight service center's new location.

"Pretty much any part that comes from supply, will come straight to the flight service center," said DeJesus. "Then the flight service center will process their transactions to make sure that the money is allocated back to them as long as they give us a repairable part."

DeJesus also said the moved has been well received from maintainers and she believes CPI can help any organization at any level to improve their processes.

"I think CPI is a great thing for any unit to do," said DeJesus. "I think it brings to light a lot of challenges that people may be having within their section. So whenever you are able to get everyone that needs to be involved together in one room, then you are able to bounce your ideas off the wall and see what is really better for everybody."