Transforming the Aircraft Inspection Process

The Air Force has begun several budget initiatives to provide funds for vital programs that include recapitalizing the growing inventory of aging aircraft. The impact of one initiative -- released as Programmed Budget Decision PBD 716 in December 2005 -- is to reduce aircraft inspection manpower by 402 billets -- a significant decrease in maintenance capability. The plan focuses on regionalizing inspection centers for select aircraft types. Although the depot-level overhaul locations would remain unchanged, the plan would eliminate the base-level inspection docks by flying the aircraft to regional sites for their incremental hourly and periodic maintenance inspections. In addition to the manpower reductions, the Air Force has begun efforts to improve aircraft availability and decrease costs. Faced with decreasing budgets, Air Force leadership established goals to increase aircraft availability by 20 percent and reduce costs by 10 percent. To achieve the projected PBD 716 manpower savings of 23.4 million over the Future Year Defense Plan FYDP, there appear to be three viable options. The first option would be to yield the manpower positions while retaining the phase and isochronal inspection docks at their current base-level locations. A second option would be to fully comply with the PBD and regionalize select inspection activities. The last option would be to develop a hybrid alternative -- sending aircraft to the regional facilities for heavy inspections, but performing the light checks or minor inspections at the base. This paper analyzes these three options against the goals to increase aircraft availability by 20 percent while decreasing costs by 10 percent. It also examines the impact of these options on a units ability to control its success or destiny with respect to mission requirements. The study also investigates the theory of reliability-centered maintenance and analyzes its applicability to the inspection options.