AFSC Goals Series Overview: Strat plan makes Center viable, ready for future

  • Published
  • By Brandice J. O'Brien
  • Tinker Air Force Base Public Affairs
Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. --  Editor's note: The following is a compilation of the first three articles in a series of six written about the Air Force Sustainment Center's goals and objectives, which are outlined in AFSC's recently developed strategic plan. The final three articles will be published in the coming weeks.

Air Force Sustainment Center personnel have their eyes on the proverbial prize. The vision of the nearly one year-old center is to make it "the most effective, efficient and innovative sustainer of air power," representatives said. In order to achieve a zealous and lofty aim, officials have developed a strategic plan.

Recently introduced to the workforce, the strategic plan is comprised of five goals and 18 objectives. The goals are: 1) Continue to strengthen sustainment processes and accountability for the nuclear enterprise; 2) Enable an adaptable, resilient, professional and highly-skilled workforce and care for our people; 3) Be a reliable, agile and responsive organization focused on achieving art of the possible; 4) Optimize infrastructure and reduce energy consumption while exceeding mission requirements; and 5) Improve cost effectiveness by maximizing a continuous process improvement mindset.

"These goals will drive continuous improvement," said Gilbert Montoya, director of Logistics for AFSC. "They will make this organization more rigorous and robust to take advantage of future opportunities. It will also make the center more cost efficient, drive the right mission-focused behaviors and create an overall environment for success."

Wing Commander Jonathan Durke has been engaged in this effort since June 2012. As a logistics exchange officer from the royal air force, he is the latest incumbent of a United Kingdom exchange post which has existed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, since the 1950s. Commander Durke is currently assigned to the Logistics Directorate and is working with the strategic planning team on the development, maturation and socialization of the AFSC Goals and Objectives.

Commander Durke and other subject matter experts began brainstorming the AFSC's goals in June 2012. In August, they met with Lt. Gen. Bruce Litchfield, AFSC commander, and his leadership team at a strategic alignment session. Using themes from the former air logistics centers and Air Force Global Logistics Support Center, they discussed ways to synchronize the ideas into a plan that would suit the new sustainment center and Air Force Materiel Command.

Commander Durke and his team used the feedback along with General Litchfield's commander's intent and drafted the goals and objectives, which are measuring devices for the accomplishments.

Once the goals and objectives were approved by General Litchfield and his leadership team, Commander Durke and subject matter experts toured the geographically-separated complexes, air base wings, supply chain management wings, and functional areas that make up the center, and introduced the plan.

"We had a very collective and integrated approach about how to achieve the goals," the commander said. "There was a wide involvement from the eight wings that now make up the AFSC to ensure that we had alignment and standardization."

But, that's not to say there weren't challenges in the development process. Standardizing a concept to accommodate eight geographically-separated units required patience and a culture change.

"It's not an insurmountable challenge, but everyone has worked in their own stovepipe and now you're asking the air base wings, supply chains and complexes to come collectively together. When you assign an office of primary responsibility, they have their location's specific issues, but you're asking them to look across with the other locations to standardize as much as possible," said Janet Johnson, AFSC Logistics Strategic Planning Branch chief and lead at Tinker. "They've probably done this to an extent before but when it comes to gathering data, reporting information and addressing issues, we haven't always thought this way."

As the center approaches its first anniversary, officials said the objectives are in various stages of achievement. Depending on their maturity levels determines the level of accomplishment. Some goals and objectives are also supported through larger Air Force goals, while others were developed specifically for the AFSC mission.

"Starting in January we moved from development to the execution piece where teams were established for each objective," Ms. Johnson said. "Now teams are meeting to walk through the Eight-Step Problem Solving Model.

"Some objectives are already to the point of being able to present metrics and that's being done in weekly performance meetings and others we're still determining how to measure," she said. "It's probably 50/50 of what's mature versus what is still in development."

In the upcoming weeks, the Tinker Take Off will publish a series of five stories introducing the goals and their counterpart objectives.

AFSC Goals Series No. 1: Focusing on nuclear mission

Air Force Sustainment Center personnel are on a mission to make the center more integrated, innovative and efficient for the future. But, it's not a simple task. To achieve the end result, personnel are working a strategic plan with five goals and 18 objectives.

The first goal is "Continue to strengthen sustainment processes and accountability for the nuclear enterprise." With it are two objectives: "100 percent positive inventory control of AFSC nuclear weapons-related material," and "Nuclear-related intercontinental ballistic missile maintenance tasks be completed on-time, on-cost with no quality or safety issues, 100 percent of the time by Oct. 1, 2015."

"The nuclear theme is clearly an area of significance across Air Force Materiel Command and Air Force Headquarters," said United Kingdom royal air force Wing Commander Jonathan Durke at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Assigned to the Logistics Directorate, he is working with the strategic planning team on the development, maturation and socialization of the AFSC Goals and Objectives. "This is very much about how supply chain and depot maintenance activities collectively support the nuclear environment."

Unlike most of the other goals, Commander Durke said only a portion of the AFSC personnel can work the nuclear enterprise plan. But, those folks understand the ins and outs of the nuclear program and its issues.

Commander Durke said as with the other goals, the nuclear piece involves the supply chain and depot maintenance elements, with specific objectives determined for each business area. The 635th Supply Chain Operations Wing leads the first objective and Maj. Gen. H. Brent Baker, Ogden Air Logistic Complex commander, oversees the second objective.

"On the supply chain side it was very straightforward. Let's make sure with any nuclear weapons-related material we know what assets the AFSC is responsible for, their condition, location and serial number in real time," the commander said. "Right now we have a number of potential discrepancies and the assigned team for this objective is working hard to resolve these."

Commander Durke said the maintenance piece was driven around Hill Air Force Base, Utah, and the installation's ability to support certain components. General Baker knew there were issues resulting in an unsatisfactory level of service, compromising the AFSC's vision to be effective and efficient. . To eliminate them, he proposed the need for strategic focus to be applied to certain maintenance issues. The plan specifically addresses time, cost, quality and safety and, while this is direct support to the AFSC commander's Leadership Model, it also presents new challenges, especially with regard to cost management.

"Are these objectives resilient in the longer term?" Commander Durke asked. "Maybe not; maybe they are best suited for a short-term plan. But, nevertheless they were seen as the big rocks for the nuclear part of the AFSC's business."

The nuclear piece with its objectives is challenging, but achievable the commander said.

AFSC Goals Series No. 2: Caring for people

Air Force Sustainment Center senior leadership considers its people a most important asset and has expressed its commitment to caring for its personnel. In fact, they created a strategic plan goal for the 32,000-person geographically-separated workforce. It is: "Enable an adaptable, resilient, professional and highly-skilled workforce and care for our people."

The goal is one of five the center is striving to achieve to become more integrated, innovative and efficient center for the future. With the goal are four objectives: "(Gain and) maintain workforce engagement greater than 80 percent," "All wings to ensure that there are sufficient leadership trained personnel to meet projected leadership vacancies," "Achieve Voluntary Protection Program 'Star' status criteria across the AFSC by Oct. 1, 2017," and "Standardize all AFSC wings' functional training and certification plans by Jan. 31, 2015."

"People are clearly a very important component of the Department of Defense and the AFSC," United Kingdom royal air force Wing Commander Jonathan Durke at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Assigned to the Logistics Directorate, he is working with the strategic planning team on the development, maturation and socialization of the AFSC Goals and Objectives.

When brainstorming the goal about people, AFSC senior leadership discussed the need for the military and civilian workforce to be adaptable and resilient given the challenges the DOD and specifically the AFSC faces, as well as the need to ensure that people are trained to the appropriate levels and they, and their families are cared for. Following the offsite, the strategy planning team took on the challenge to determine how to ensure achievement of this goal and set meaningful and measurable objectives.

The objective relating to workforce engagement set the biggest challenge across the AFSC. Seven areas were considered important to measure and manage are 1) levels of training, 2) professional development opportunities, 3) leadership, 4) tools to complete the job, 5) safe working environment, 6) support mechanisms in place and welfare capabilities and 7) the workforce adaptability and engagement with change and transformation.

"The leadership team is taken with a number of other areas, firstly how we train our leadership and are we training them to be good leaders," said Commander Durke. "Rather than have a leadership vacancy and no on trained and losing time, efficiency and affecting the mission we need to get personnel leadership trained so when vacancies arise we have sufficient resource."

The functional training and certification objective is an additional piece to the goal. The objective is about standardizing the training plans predominantly for supply chain and maintenance personnel, which are the largest pieces to the center. Workforce engagement and the two training objectives are co-led by the AFSC Personnel Directorate and AFSC Logistics Group.

Safety and the culture of creating a secure work environment are also very important to the AFSC.

"We already measure incident rates but there is now a requirement for a more widespread change to meet a commercial safety standard," the commander said. "We want more of a cultural change and a campaign across the entire organization, and make sure it's recognized by the accredited safety organization, Occupational Safety and Health Administration with its 'Star' status."

Overseen by Brig. Gen. Cedric George, commander of the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex, Ga., the safety objective has a four-year deadline to ensure the center's units fulfills their responsibilities and allows enough time for OSHA to complete its ongoing and reassessment evaluations.

"Every area of AFSC focuses on these issues, but the way we measure efforts at different locations varies," said Janet Johnson, AFSC Logistics Strategic Planning Branch chief and lead at Tinker. "The goal is to standardize. The data exists, but the enterprise-wide view is where the objectives are focused."