AFSO21 team identifies ways to reduce launch, recovery times

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Sarah E. Stegman
  • 2d Bomb Wing Public Affairs
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. --  An Air Force Smart Operations 21-led rapid improvement event team of 2d Bomb Wing operators and maintainers recently identified ways to reduce the time it takes to launch and recover B-52s to produce more sorties.

The goal of the weeklong brainstorming session was to improve the process by reducing recovery time by 30 percent. Additionally the team sought to increase the 12-hour fix rate by 20 percent, which would increase weekly production by two more sorties per aircraft maintenance unit.

"Of the steps we identified, more than half were non-value-added steps. Specifically, 26 were value added, 44 were non-value added, 5 are non-value added but required and 5 were delay loops," said Capt. Mikel Gregory, the AFSO21 RIE team lead and operations officer. "We realized that the lack of crew chief time on aircraft, transportation issues and communication and the geography of support elements were the root causes of the long recovery times."

Historically, aircraft recovery times have taken more than 12 hours, which limited the 2d BW to generate enough sorties to meet minimum Ready Aircrew Program requirements, Captain Gregory explained.

The team, comprised of 18 Airmen, was able to identify 80 steps in the launch and recovery process.


To make the process more efficient, new steps will be implemented to ensure aircraft are mission capable more often to produce extra sorties. Some of the steps can be done immediately while others will take time to put into day-to-day operations.

"Ultimately, if we can get crew chiefs to their aircraft faster for launch preparation and keep them on the flightline it will save up to two hours," Captain Gregory said. "Tailoring roll call for launching crew chiefs saves 45 minutes and by moving the launching crew chiefs to the front of tool check-out lines an hour can be saved."

Other time-saving steps include creating an aerospace ground equipment subpool closer to the aircraft and providing a vehicle and individual radios to crew chiefs. This helps eliminate travel time to and from AMUs and keeps maintainers at the aircraft to provide more effective maintenance.

After taking a look at each individual step, the group was able to remove two value-added steps and 12 non-value-added steps, changing the total steps from 80 to 67.

"In the value of time saved, launch times went from 1369 minutes to 1219 minutes, saving 150 minutes. With the new steop recovery times could be cut back by 58 percent," Captain Gregory said. "All in all, the process takes 2881 minutes and with the new process the time would be shaved down to 2121 minutes with a savings of 760 minutes. This is enough time to produce the extra sorties needed to keep up with the RAP requirements."

The new process has begun, but some of the new steps will have to be slowly integrated through March.

The new process will have its challenges, as with any new way of doing things and changing daily operations.

"The hope and goal of this entire process is to be able to take on new challenges to support mission and eliminate waste," said Capt. Daniel Uchtmann, AFSO 21 facilitator. "By using AFSO 21 we can use a systematic approach to eliminate waste and become more mission effective and efficient."