US Air Force,
WASHINGTON: Maintenance leaders from the Air Staff and major commands met in Dayton, Ohio, to discuss the current state of Air Force maintenance, trends, fiscal realities and vision through the year 2016.
Known as “Air Force Maintenance for the 21st Century,” or AFMx21, the program is championed by Brig. Gen. Kathleen D. Close, the Air Force director of maintenance, and major command maintenance division chiefs.
General Close said a number of things led to the AFMx21 effort.
“We are undergoing an incredible amount of change across maintenance and the entire logistics enterprise,” she said. “Change is driven by a host of factors such as reduced budgets and manpower, the need to transform our processes to generate savings for weapon system recapitalization, and the (need) to become lean and flexible in responding to global expeditionary requirements.”
She said the AFMx21 planning process provides the Air Force maintenance community with “a structured approach to align, integrate and focus our multiple transformation efforts for maximum impact.”
At the Dayton meeting, each major command was represented by a colonel and a chief master sergeant, or civilian equivalent. The AFMx21 meeting participants make up the Air Force Maintenance Executive Board, or AFMxEB. The AFMxEB provides oversight for the Air Force maintenance strategic planning and implementation process in support of AFMx21, eLog21, Agile Combat Support, and Air Force long-range goals and objectives to provide combat-ready weapon systems, equipment and Airmen any time, any place.
The AFMxEB members developed a vision for the Air Force maintenance community and identified goals and objectives to achieve that vision. The vision is: “Total Force, multi-skilled maintainers generating safe, mission-ready weapons systems and equipment in a lean, flexible and global environment.”
Key strategic issues the AFMxEB dealt with included such topics as recruiting, developing and retaining multi-skilled maintainers; optimizing processes to build more effective, lean and flexible organizational structures; and determining how to provide maintainers with the right tools, equipment and training to promote safe and efficient maintenance operations.
“Although strategic planning is tough work, I am very enthusiastic about what we are doing,” General Close said. “We created a vision of the future to guide us and as a result we will become better at prioritizing and focusing our transformational efforts on the most important aspects of our business: generating safe and mission-ready weapon systems and equipment.
“Additionally, AFMx21 will help us optimize our use of limited resources and to make better decisions with the long view in mind,” the general said.
To this end, the AFMxEB has defined goals and supporting objectives that will become the foundation for execution of the AFMx21 plan.
