CHARLESTON AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. –
It has been almost a year since we were first introduced to the concept of Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century, and what a journey it has been!
We've seen a number of great initiatives being implemented and many of you have gained a true understanding of what continuous process improvement can do for the greater good of our operations.
I'm truly impressed by those who have developed a passion for doing AFSO 21. Many of you have identified and evaluated exactly what the key processes of your job are and what you really should be doing to directly assure mission accomplishment. You've gotten your organizations ready for lean concept implementation by sorting, straightening, cleaning and inspecting your work areas with the mindset of "how does this impact the big picture of what I do?" You've focused on solving any process problems and eliminating wasteful steps. Most importantly, you've attempted to ensure what you've improved becomes 'standard work' so that your great work can be easily sustained over time.
To those of you who have done this and done it so well with an eye on safety at all times, I thank you. As the 437th Airlift Wing's AFSO 21 facilitator, I must admit this journey has been tough on many of us. It is sometimes very difficult to change old ways of thinking and difficult not to fall into old habits, especially at such a high operations tempo.
I'm thankful because we can finally see that with many of our initiatives -- working so hard to make sure we've pre-planned to have the right people at the process improvement event, taking people away from their overwhelmingly busy duty areas and using AFSO 21 the right way to remove roadblocks -- we are starting to truly see where we are working smarter, not harder. We are finally able to realize the savings in time and money brought about by our efforts make it all well worth it.
Now, we've just got to keep looking at everything we do with the Air Force Lean perspective. We must continually ask ourselves, 'is this the best way to be doing this?' or 'does this contribute to my mission?'
Knowing how to use AFSO 21 concepts here to help get waste eliminating effort rolling is key. Most of the time, it's as easy as bringing your ideas to your supervisor's attention or submitting your ideas through the items of interest at AFSO 21 on the Globemaster website. We know the best improvement ideas typically come from the people like you who directly work the areas every day and with the proper AFSO 21 structure here, we can help make those waste-reducing ideas a reality.
As Colonel Joerger said last week, "We must have a passion for what we do because we're impacting people's lives and must 'bring it' every day."
From an AFSO 21 perspective, we must eliminate every single action that does not add value to our mission to provide better service to the war fighter. AFSO 21 helps us execute the mission more effectively, and ultimately saves lives.
I'm a believer that if Smart Operations concepts can be used correctly, we can seriously contribute to this greater good and I am excited to see our continuing progress in this journey. It is my hope that those of you conducting AFSO 21 events can look back at the event a year or so from now and see the improvement was implemented correctly, still going strong, and really helping our Air Force continue to be the best in the world.