AFMC announces Robert T. Mason award nominees

  • Published
  • By Bill Orndorff
HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah --  Performing the maintenance, repair and overhaul on Vietnam-era bomb lifters hasn't been an easy task for the 526th Electronics Maintenance Squadron -- but five years later, the shop is producing a record number of items more efficiently and with fewer mechanics. 

The MJ-1 Lift Truck or Bomb Lifter workload came to the 526th in 2006 with no parts in stock and no technical data to guide the work. Also called a "Jammer," the small, 25-horsepower trucks have been moving, handling and lifting every type of ordnance, pod and fuel tank in the Air Force's arsenal since the 1950s. The Jammer nickname resulted from the units loading 500-pound bombs into the bays of B-52D Bombers in Vietnam -- they literally jammed 96 bombs into one aircraft. 

Despite their long life and faithful performance, the Jammers had received no overhauls -- only minor repairs -- so many were out of service.

The first year, the 526th completely overhauled just one Jammer, carefully taking it apart, studying the pieces, creating a technical order, manufacturing new parts as needed and designing a work flow. The second year, five units were completed.

"By the third year, they produced 35, but flow days were still too high," said Tim Gray, 526th director. "When I got here the fall of 2008, I reduced the amount authorized on work at any given time to 90 days and expanded the amount of space they had and moved in a good solid supervisor and lead over there. The work has just taken off."

By Aug. 6 of this year, the squadron produced its 100th Jammer, overhauling 60 in the first eight months of 2009, and surpassing the record of the workload's first three years combined. Flow days have decreased from 338 in 2006 to 80 this year.

The difference in production came as the squadron brought Lean principles and cellular flow into the process, as many other 309th Maintenance Wing shops have done. Employee input helped create a rolling work stand that brought the vehicle off the floor to a working level and allowed it to be easily moved from work cell to work cell.

"We worked out the bugs, and the employees got more engaged in finding solutions to the problems, figuring out what tooling we needed, what works best -- the basic flow of the whole system. Management and employees came together," said Scott Hancock, MJ-1 Bomb Lift Shop supervisor. "They had never worked on a unit like this before -- until 2006, it was never slated to be overhauled. 

"The first article process is quite involved because you have to tear everything down, prototype everything to make sure you can get parts support for all that, then it takes awhile to make sure parts and everything comes together."

The Jammer work area is now organized into 10 work cells, from disassembly to testing and final painting, as the bomb lift moves for various stages of overhaul. A final "white light" inspection takes an intense look at every part of the unit to make sure there are no cracks, deformities or other problems.

"Because this is a nuclear-certified piece of equipment, we have to make sure everything goes back correctly and in accordance with the technical order and there is no deviation," said Craig Webster, Ground Power Flight chief. "Any time we find we're going to change a process we have to get engineering approval on that."

The work cells are designed to perform the required maintenance and move an asset to the next cell every 2 to 2.5 days, Mr. Webster said. As the technicians become more familiar with the Jammer and the overhaul work needed, and as parts are more readily available, the flow days are improving.

"I credit the people on the floor for their team work and working together with engineering to come up with the different designs to make the work easier," Mr. Webster said. "They are on track now to produce two or three per week."

The work earned the shop a nomination for the Robert T. Mason Award for Depot Maintenance Excellence. The award, sponsored by the Secretary of Defense, is presented to the depot-level maintenance program that has distinguished itself through innovative and outstanding support to DoD operating units.