AFSO 21 begins integration Published Sept. 7, 2006 By Tarsha Storey 20th Fighter Wing Public Affairs SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. -- Starting the last week of September, Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century will start to redefine how Shaw conducts business by increasing productivity and quality while eliminating waste. "The AFSO 21 initiative will be an ongoing process that will eventually involve all of the 20th FW, allowing us to improve quality while reducing workloads," said Col. Bill Hyatt, 20th Fighter Wing commander. An enterprise leadership team, consisting of the wing, vice and group commanders, will conduct an AFSO 21 enterprise value stream map and analysis to look at what the 20th FW does and how the wing can set its priorities to improve operations and eliminate waste, said Col. Michael Vidal, 20th Maintenance Group commander. "We have a culture in the Air Force to tackle our problems, but we don't always have the best training to systematically go about trying to identify the real problem. That's a large part of what the AFSO 21 initiative is intended to do -- help us see waste," Col. Vidal said. While the AFSO 21 initiative is new, the basic principles of the initiative are not. It is all about building on the Air Force culture already in place. It applies several concepts of business strategy such as Lean, Six Sigma and others, Col. Vidal said. The plan incorporates a plan of having everything clean, organized and in its place -- and keeping it that way, Col. Vidal said. For example, every section in the maintenance group tool box is shadowed to show where every tool should be. This not only shows if anything is missing, but it also helps members locate the proper tool needed for the job -- each time they need it, Col. Vidal said. Some aspects of AFSO 21 are already in progress. Recently, the 20th MXG instituted "knock it off" criteria where members can raise their hands and bring problems to the attention of leadership, Col. Vidal said. Those problems can be anything from not having the right equipment to do a particular job to calling attention to a process where there are no technical orders or an unsafe practice. During the value stream and analysis, the leadership team will identify members of the wing who will be trained in the new initiative, Col. Vidal said. Col. Vidal said training will not be a mass briefing. It will be "training while doing" to educate members on how to apply the principles in day-to-day job functions. "It is like learning a new language. If we teach you how to speak a new language, and you are not put in an environment where you use that skill, you forget how to use it," Col. Vidal said. The selected members will observe a rapid improvement event where they will learn the basics of Lean and some of the other business improvement initiative concepts used in AFSO 21. Then they will co-lead an event and eventually lead their own event where a second group of training members will observe. This process will continuously build a larger group of people trained in the basics of AFSO 21, Col. Vidal said. A rapid improvement event starts out with a team of no more than 10 people looking at a current process and identifying targets of improvement within that process. Then the team will devise a future plan of what that same process could look like in six to 12 months and develop a plan to achieve it. Because they will keep leadership informed of the process, the next step -- after approval -- will be implementing the plan, leading to a direct change on their own work process, Col. Vidal said.