Lean and/or Pulse. Are they producing the goods?

[HEDP]

Is your fleet affected?

Have these 'new' engineering principles increased availability of your type?

What other impacts have these principles had?

Are the engineers happier in this environment?

Lots of questions I know but a genuine desire to get to the bottom of whether it is helping or not.

HEDP

[mojocvh]

...But more to the point WHO told all those SAC (Technicians) that they had the same skill sets at time served FT's and JT's. That is where all this Lean/Jump was/is failing...in the basic skill sets of the mechanics.....still it saves a bob or two.


All my 2p's worth, not like I have experienced any of this at all......:rolleyes:

MoJo

[Front Seater]

HEDP,

You know you are fishing - certainly from our own experience at Wattashame as they are all pulsing down through the line with bits missing and then having to re-enter back at the original points to have the bits missing fitted

Ah, but to get to the bits that need fitting they then have to remove the bits done further down the line in order to retrofit the original bits missed.

Confused and surprised - go and have a look for yourself - lovely shiney hangar though!

But from the sounds of it Odiham are having as much success or answer B....

[Mr C Hinecap]

Lean is certainly not just an engineering principle and has not been applied just as that. It is a tool for revising your business processes. It can be very good - if applied properly with the proper intentions. However, if it is applied to reduce manpower, that might just be a very shallow reason and not give the intended results.

[nivsy]

If applied correctly, the five main principles of LEAN should always as stated above improve business processes. It can also help to identify irreducible spare capacity, the ability to further use commercial exploitation where possible and between the two irradicate waste and also create opportunity to get some money back.

Nivsy

[cornish-stormrider]

Having experienced lean in civvy street to quite some depth I feel I can say "THERE IS NO PLACE FOR IT IN MILITARY AVIATION ENGINEERING"

Lean is about increasing productivity, cutting waste, having less WIP, and maximising throughput.

There is bugger all in there about flight safety, best effort engineering, and doing it right. If they wanted an efficient production life for repairing aircraft they shouldn't be losing all the skilled fitters and putting half trained monkeys in place because its cheaper and saves 0.17% on the bottom line of the spreadsheet. The RAF tg 1 and 2 already do a much better job than if they got in a lean consultant to balls it all up !!!

[Si Clik]

LEAN 2P RIE

Oops nearly lost in the speak, I must now be assimilated.

From my perspective there is a lot right about looking at your process, working out the constituent parts, and then putting it together in a logical fashion to gain the best most efficient ouput.

The problem we have in the military applying what seems like commonsense is this:

A. LEAN is a total system, to make it work it has to be 100% not piecemeal and should be end to end - ie What are the defence goals of the UK, what do we need... all the way to how many bullets do we need to kill the enemy.
B. When TOYOTA do LEAN they don't argue with the outcome that says you need to spend £1.2m or more to make a long term efficiency saving.
C. When TOYOTA do LEAN the top neddies don't say we need to save XX posts during this event.
D. When TOYOTA do LEAN they have a supply chain that can actually deliver components Just In Time rather than Just Too Late or Never at all.
E. TOYOTA don't rob one car on the production line to make another.

In sum a great idea but completely unsuited to a cash strapped MoD with a defence industry that thinks spare parts are something to hold in the repair loop for as long as possible.

So far, I have fully engaged in every event I have been to, and they always illuminate a better process or delivery method; unfortunately we just don't have the wherewithal to apply it.

Si

[DaveyBoy]

What other impacts have these principles had?
I think we've conclusively proved that if you LEAN too far you fall over.
Are the engineers happier in this environment?
Mostly, but only because they've all PVR'd.

Seriously though, there's a thread about it here with some good points on:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=256895

As has been said above, and as is pointed out in post number 2 on the thread I've linked to, it isn't really the LEAN team's fault if a decision had already been made to reduce manpower by so much, and they had to make the best of whatever was left. We definitely are undermanned and underresourced for what we asked to do. However, I think you'll agree that the way everyone seems to end up blaming the poor LEAN team for decisions about manpower that had already been taken, and at a much higher level, was a masterstroke of passing the buck by the top brass!

Dave

[reddeathdrinker]

Is your fleet affected?

Yes.

Have these 'new' engineering principles increased availability of your type?

No (but on paper, it's probably "Yes", because they are massaging the figure to make themselves look good)

What other impacts have these principles had?

Shortage of manpower (apparently my trade is 70% overmanned. That must be the reason there's sometimes only my SNEC, me and an AMM on shift)

Are the engineers happier in this environment?

No. That's why the TG1/2 PVR rate has shot through the roof.....

[Almost_done]

I believe in LEAN, Kaizen, TQM and JIT. These methodologies DO work if the organisation as a whole is committed to them (committed being the key word).

There is a word in the Kaizen method for the incorrect use of the method and it follows these simple principles.

‘Where Kaizen is often misunderstood and applied incorrectly, resulting in bad outcomes including, for example, layoffs. This is called "kaiaku" - literally, "change for the worse." Layoffs are not the intent of kaizen. Instead, kaizen must be practiced in tandem with the "Respect for People" principle. Without "Respect for People," there can be no continuous improvement. Instead, the usual result is one-time gains that quickly fade.’


Anyone notice any similarities there?

[Safeware]

The latest issue of Flight has an article on how it is proving successful for the US military.

Mind you, they probably do it properly.

sw

[The Helpful Stacker]

In my ever-so-humble opinion (having been 'dicked' for a few LEAN events now at Odious) I believe the over-riding problem with the RAF's application of LEAN is honesty.

Simply put LEAN is being used by the RAF to cut manpower and any changes in working processes/improvements are not as a result of the actual LEAN principles but are as a result of the 'can do' attitude of the personnel who are affected by it.

Of course one of the first things the Squadron Bleeder in charge of the LEAN team says on an event is that "LEAN is not about cutting manpower", yet this is so patiently false. In the RAF's application of it this is all LEAN is about.

But don't worry thpugh, because if you can prove a section is already undermanned by using the '8 hour day equals 5 1/2 productive hours per person' formula that is the cornerstone to their calculations you'll get more personnel right? Will you f$%k.:mad:

[South Bound]

Yeah, yeah, we have all done 'Lean' to death. Good idea, applied poorly in this environment.

But what about the second half of the question - the 'Pulse' bit. How is that working?

From my perspective, again Pulse is one of those things that works really well in civvie street and on production lines where ALL the spares are ready to go and the condition of each item being made is known. The problem in the military is that we don't have the spares and this can lead to holes and this can completely bu**er up the pulse as suggested in one of the messages above. Additionally, there are virtually no aircraft types that can accurately predict the condition of the aircraft entering pulse, there can only be a rough idea of how much arising work is going to be found and again this impacts the pulse.

Pulse is a very effective way of doing things if you know exactly what it is you are going to do and you have everything to hand to do it - we have neither.

[startermotor]

Lean works on a production line environment, not on the front line.
It is my belief that a lot of civvie companies are now moving away from lean. (only rumours)

[Hilife]

Lean is an appealing concept. However, lean doesn’t allow for major surges in demand, nor does it take into account the effect that these surges or the lean process itself can have on the very well being and motivation of the people involved.

When problems occur, you end-up spending too much time fire fighting and playing catch-up and any knock-on effect is felt downstream for far too long.

Making nuts and bolts in a fully automated machine shop is an excellent example of how lean can transform production. However, the problem comes when you introduce humans into the lean process, as people can’t work flat-out all the time without being effected.

The Armed Forces is an insurance policy and not suited for ‘just in time delivery’, as such she needs a little fat around the waist.

[Exrigger]

On some units, lean is also being used to remove equipment and c stores along with manpower reductions, bays that used to be able to service more than one item have had manpower reduced, therefore they cannot service all the kit so why have the spares and test equipment, so lets get rid of that as well.

Pulse line: The aircraft have input meetings that agree the standard of the aircraft at input and the work required by the MOD/customer (Sqd robs outstanding, ADFs, Lims, husbandry entries, mods, EIs etc). This is agreed with due regards to the availability of the spares to carry out all the tasks. What actually happens is the input standard/work to be done is agreed but when the aircraft arrives in the slot the goal posts are moved. At the end of the inspection phase it is obvious that emerging work is an unknown, if this work cannot be carried out within time or through lack of spares a meeting is conducted as an update with the MOD/customer as to the way forward. The first aircraft through any line of servicing sets the standard guidelines for the rest, if this aircarft cannot have holes filled through inability to repair/source parts then the only option is to rob the last one into the pulse line, eventually you could end up with the last couple of aircraft being in bits untill spares become available.

Finally, I thought that the F3 spares recovery programme was releasing lots of spares into the system at the moment, allthough as the F3 fleet is drawn down these spares will dissapear it still means for some time there will be items more available than they have been.

[South Bound]

HiLife - Lean is as flexible as we make it. If we consider the need to surge during a Lean event, there is no reason why the capability cannot be kept. Problems occur when it is managed badly, or surge is shrugged off or ignored. The whole thing is soooo frustrating - Lean is a good tool, we just wield it badly...

[Kengineer-130]

just look at the appaling mess lyneham engineering wing is in, that should tell you all you need to know :ugh: :ugh: :ugh: :ugh: :mad: , still suffering 3 years on :(

[Roland Pulfrew]

Sadly this is what you get for allowing personnel time off to do MBAs :yuk: . If they do their own MBA part time and using distance learning (respect to the individual) then it gets worse. My contacts in industry say an MBA is valid for only 3 - 5 years unless you use the teachings on a daily basis and keep up to date with developments. We allow people to do them and then post them into arenas where the teachings are:

a. Not applicable
b. Out-of-date by the time they get in a position to implement them
c Discredited and dumped by industry (just like open plan and RAB)!!:ugh:

But then persuading someone who has studied long and hard to get an MBA that it is out-of-date is very difficult.

[South Bound]

:confused: :confused: :confused:
RP

What on earth has this MBA thing got to do with anything?

Identifying waste and best practise should not be criticised. Let us not forget that the money has gone, the posts are going and some people are trying to make sure that the organisation can still operate once the people have left. It is natural to look to other organisations to get ideas about how to survive. The fact that we have then implemented them poorly (in some cases) is the problem.

[Roland Pulfrew]

SB

My point exactly. A lot of the latest fad thinking comes from Business Schools. We are not a business and some of their teaching does not fit our model or should not be applied to a non profit making organization. We therefore implement partially thought through ideas, using business practices which may not be appropriate nor even current thinking, without providing the funding to achieve the long term goal. In the military LEAN has mainly been about manpower savings.

We have spent the last 10 - 15 years being hit with "savings targets". Logically there is a point where there are no more savings. In the NHS you close a ward and bleat to the press. In the military you close a sqn, scrap a frigate or disband a minor regiment. Once gone we do not get them back, unlike the NHS who will probably get the funding or be allowed to overspend their budget (of £88.8 BILLION in 05/06)

[tucumseh]

Southbound

“Identifying waste and best practise should not be criticised”.

Roland

“We are not a business”


I agree. How refreshing it is to see others disagree with the Senior Ranks, DPA and DLO Executive Boards, Ministers and the many others in MoD who advocate and condone waste, and are so up themselves about business practices they lost sight many years ago of what the MoD is meant to achieve.

[Army Mover]

I thinkthe problem with Lean and the military is that when Team Toyota implement it, then Team Toyota reap the rewards; when Team Military do it, the Government takes back all the rewards in the form of reduced stock holdings and manpower, the Military don't reap any rewards at all.

[edwardspannerhands]

NO!:ugh: Its as simple as that!

[Streetpilot]

Passengers: An inconvenience to those who operate military transport aircraft or just in the way of lean?

Once upon a time aircraft carrying passengers were loaded and unloaded on the ASP in front of the Air Terminal at Brize (The “Water Front”), this meant minimal time between ac and lounge and little need for buses.

Then one day along came a Lean Team……
In one of the best examples of how the principles of lean have not been applied in the round an engineering “saving” was made by removing the policy of towing certain vintage ac to/from The Water Front. This has resulted in the payload being trucked across a busy active runway; in-flight rations, passengers (using the only 2 available 50 seat coaches and drivers); bags making several journeys using towing vehicles with a top speed of 7 MPH.
When ac arrive the passengers have to wait onboard whilst the tug reverses the ac into it’s parking place; usually a 2 or 3 point manoeuvre as it’s tight for space over there. Only then can the steps go in and the passengers and bags be offloaded, again to wait to cross the active. :ugh:

Thankfully it has made the life of the engineers easier – no more inconvenient towing of the frames across to The Water Front for the passengers and as for the passengers themselves well the long journey back to the terminal keeps their minds off other things especially when they have been offloaded because of a tech delay on their trip out!:rolleyes:

I’m sure the movers and MT will be looking forward to their chance to be leaned so that they get the extra resources needed to achieve their output now that their goalposts have been moved.

Perhaps the Lean Team should have read:
“Applying Lessons from Lean Production Theory to Transit Planning”
By Robert A. Dunning (Boeing Commercial Airplane Company) and Thomas M. Richer (Linbeck Corporation)

http://www.oz.net/~cliff/APM2001g.PDF (http://www.oz.net/%7Ecliff/APM2001g.PDF)

Passengers: An inconvenience to those who operate military transport aircraft or just in the way of lean?



Before anyone asks, No I'm not a mover!:)

[Pete_Tong]

Well amazing, as soon as someone points out the failings in the lean at Brize Norton and how it makes the movers job more labour intensive (and which was no doubt signed off by aircrew and engineers with no thought for the consequences out side their own environs) the thread goes quiet! :ugh:

On behalf of my fellow scalies who have over the recent past been well looked after by the RAF Movers I would like to say:

Well done Movers! :D

Isn't it about time the rest of you crabs started to give respect where it is due? :ok:

Standing by to get the incursion from another site slagging:)

[Prop-Ed]

Fine, I'll bite.

Yes, credit where it's due. However, for every one story of movers doing a good job I can give you 10 that would horrify you.

So lets not get carried away....:cool:

[dogrobber]

dont be a coward,,u must be the Sgt, Ftsgt, in that section .......get some back bone guy or get out !!!!!!"!!!

[Confucius]

B. When TOYOTA do LEAN they don't argue with the outcome that says you need to spend £1.2m or more to make a long term efficiency saving.
C. When TOYOTA do LEAN the top neddies don't say we need to save XX posts during this event.
D. When TOYOTA do LEAN they have a supply chain that can actually deliver components Just In Time rather than Just Too Late or Never at all.
E. TOYOTA don't rob one car on the production line to make another.

When Toyota do F1 they spend more than any other team and still get **** all in the way of results.

When Toyota strive for elitism they fall far, far short in any area that make cars feel special.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of lean, but then I feel whole concept of running the military on business principles is W-R-O-N-G.

[Wensleydale]

When the e-mails circulate, demanding why we can justify not releasing two SNCOs and 3 ORs for guarding duties at such and such airfield for 2 months, I just have to type "We've been leaned!".

Flexibility is the key to air power, and our lordships have taken it all away.

[r supwoods]

So what happens when all the Rubb Hangars are full of aircraft awaiting spares :mad:

[Exrigger]

If pulse/lean/civilianisation/BAES is responsible for all the personnel leaving the RAF and for aircraft sitting in the maintenance hangars with no spares to finish the maintenance, could I ask what on earth the blue suit chaps did to all the spares that it is implied we had lots of before the civvies took over. Oh I know the civvies pinched them and sold them of so the shareholders could afford another posh nosh.
On second thoughts maybe they told the MOD/Government that if they reduce the manpower and if give us the contracts for maintenenance we will employ them, and at the same time reduce the forces costs by not actually producing aircraft as there is not enough people left to use them. Win win all around in the MOD /Government/Civvy companies books. Ah but hark I keep hearing that the maintenance is being carried out by people who do not know what they are doing and it is all lean and the civvies fault, so where are all the ex service personnel and the spares, its a mystery.

[Speedy Brace]

GR4 minor and minor star servicing , according to lean /pulse should take 80 days. the pulse line is set at 8x10 day cycles if you double shift ( days /nights on pulse one this helps). Said the the man . His facts where gathered through intense info gathering and suitably applied to the model as directed. Some of the key fact gathered where :- 1, The A/C will take approx 96 days to service. 2. We need 9 riggers per pulse ( double for pulse one). 3.The spares have to be in place along with the correct tooling and test equipment and GSE. get all this and all will be rosey said the worker bees
Reality.Manpower is made up of RAF and civis(exraf with pensions and redundancy money) and number approx five per team. Not one single A/C that has managed to pass through the hangar door after servicing on day 80. (On paper it has because of creative accounting by BAE who don't want to miss out on bonus's) Manpower is supplimented by ex RAF engineers of SNCO and above titles who haven't turned spanners in a while, well not since they became residents at the old folks home. NO A/c Has made it out in under 96 days. At present they have been told that they are 49 riggers down on the manpower requirement needed. Current A/C in the shed have been in there for 120 days plus and counting.
Reason are down to spares/manpower /unrealistic goals.
As for the pulse system there are 5 A/C currently in pulse 8 all scrapping after A/C spares/ manpower / GSE and test equipment.
Reaons.As the A/C pulsed they started to fall down due to emergent work. so the powers that be applied the non lean princible of cannabalisation when they could. Spares issue and robs created a back log of work ( the mantra of YOU CAN NOT STOP THE PULSE LINE had been applied to.) guess what happened. They (A/C) all arrive at pulse eight and wait for their turn to go to the top of the priority list for incomming spares.
Reality check now... All the A/C apart from pulse 1 are static....now...
When they ran out of real estate they stopped the pulse. but not for too long.
if you have scrambled egg on your cap or are a shareholder and belive the stats you are fed well, take no notice of this message because everything in the world is rosy and smells of fresh paint. The smoke and mirrors trick is alive and well......
I belive that there is a study on at the moment that suggest that the findings will reveal that the whole of the tonka fleet will run out of flying hour in 2 years... future is not looking too bright....
And to end... Core lean have never been anywhere near the place since it started pulsing to actualy see for themselves if there planning and core values still stand up.....
rant off...spelling mistakes due to intoxication ..appologise..

[Exrigger]

1982 First Minor servicings on Tornados, aircraft came to end of minor cant go out , no spares, answer lets rob. When all the robs were exhausted lets extend the minors, can't do that says the management we will bring your next aircraft in a day early you can rob that, then it was two days then three and four. We then had a static minor line with jets sitting around waiting to get to the top of the priotity list for spares, de ja vu or what. St Athan 16FI wing change programme and Tornado Majors, exactlty the same except there we had a few aircraft in storage that were stripped of every part possible to attempt to keep up. In those days there was not a civvie in site manageing these programmes, ahh I here you say the numpties in blue that made the decisions then are now out with nice fat pensions and well paid jobs and could care less and the Lean process that the MOD applied incorrectly has now backfired as well. I think some people are doing the civvie maintenance teams a dis-service, even though I agree that some of the BAES management have not grasped that maintenance is vastly different to design, development, production and CWP work.

[Melchett01]

“Identifying waste and best practise should not be criticised”.


Fair enough, but who said that Lean is actually best practice - where is their proof that for a military unit Lean is the best solution? And more importantly, can they justify it as being best practice? It does make me laugh that when lean events occur on stations that the Execs refuse to admit that they are implementing it solely as a cost cutting exercise. Just who do they think they are kidding?

Personally, I think common sense and shooting the accountants should be taken as the new best practice :ok:

[Jobza Guddun]

"Aircraft sat in Rubbs awaiting spares "

Ah. There's a solution for that in a Windscale / Sellafield sort of way. They're taking the Rubbs down, so there won't be any "aircraft sat in Rubbs awaiting spares". Good eh?

The situation needs manpower and spares. The RAF has funds for neither. Long term, I believe we will have a big problem with availability in the GR force - we fly the heck out of the inherently serviceable ones as we don't have the manpower any more (even less from Apr 08 :ugh: ) to get on top of the inherently ****e ones. Also, by taking away the AMF at Lousymouth, we are very much putting our eggs in one basket with the limited infrastructure available at Marham. Ergo, trouble ahead.

Just my two penn'orth.

JG

Inflexibility, the new key to modern RAF air power.

[Red Line Entry]

Five years ago, the Tornado IPT spent £600 million per year on the Tornado fleet. It now spends under half of that. On top of that, the Tornado Force has reduced by about 500 posts (representing over £15 million in capitation costs). These are HUGE savings - is it any wonder that it has caused a lot of pain to get to where we are?

Life is tight on the sqns and is likely to not get any better, but the fact is that we are meeting the op and training requirement.

Those who say we should not be run by accountants - come and join the real world! Defence has to be affordable, and Tornado has to be the same. We could not have kept going the way we were - with every MOB set up as a cold war citadel.

Yes, it's painful; yes, it ain't working yet; no, we didn't have a choice.

[cornish-stormrider]

Ah yes and when you sack all the engineers as a cost saving exercise and employ half trained apes that wouldn't be trusted to sweep the hanger floor if we let them wear the blue suit, then when the frames start piling in we can all participate in a nice witch hunt.

Oh how I long for the day when a liney was given a backseat trip to scare the ****e out of him and to make him realise the supreme impotance of not f*%king up, and if he did to damn well tell someone.

The bottom line of lean and pulse is

PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE, EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY

and that to me is a crime, make sure you check your jet right sirs and hopefully you won't need to attend Mr Martin and Mr Baker for a nice tie.
Fly safe, fly well, fly to win.

Me I shall stay on the ground and pray copiously for you all out there in harms way, and yes I still miss the life of liney.

Straitens knackered back and throws a cheery liney wave to the under-powered hair dryer driven swing wing thing taxying by:ok:

[Exrigger]

cornish-stormrider
Ah yes and when you sack all the engineers as a cost saving exercise and employ half trained apes that wouldn't be trusted to sweep the hanger floor if we let them wear the blue suit, then when the frames start piling in we can all participate in a nice witch hunt.

Those half trained apes are the same engineers that have just 'been sacked'/left the RAF, so are you implying that 'when the frames start piling in' these same engineers were not doing their jobs while still wearing a blue suit, not very loyal to your fellow blue/ex blue suiters what.

[TonkaEngO]

Ex Rigger

What you say is indeed very true, my concern would be who will be employed to do the same work when there is no ready supply of vastly experienced and highly trained ex RAF available in 5 years time? Some these guys may be a little spanner rusty, but I have found that they love the chance to do a full shift of spannering rather than being constantly diverted by 6000s, sorting guard duties/parades/CO's inspections etc etc.

Red Line

Hit the nail on the head - we had no choice. Like it or not things had to change.

Ref ac deliverly from Sched Maint times - when did they ever come out 'on time'? The one problem that cannot be forecast - hence managed effectively - with an ageing fleet, is emergent work. V v difficult to deal with on a tight turnround time.

[cornish-stormrider]

Funny that how I am seeing an awful lot of ex engineers doing anything other than aircraft........

and also its soon going to going to be the ex sac-techs out there and anyone else that the contractors can employ for peanuts!

[sharmine]

The comments on this tread are interesting to me as I ran an AMF type unit for many a year. Heres what I noticed about the Serviceman vs Civvy thing. If our crews got an aircraft out on time they would get a day off and if it was early they would get more days off until the next jet/helo came in. On the jet line (all servicemen) many a day off was had but on the Helo lines (some lines service some civvy) the service crews would get their time off but the civvies usually ran over because they weren't interested in time off as much as they were at getting the extra pay from overtime. They even resorted to saving up defects that would emerge during the latter engine runs and test flights forcing us to allow late work and Sat/Sun work and hence attract a lot of overtime pay. What do you expect when the pay wasn't so good. These were all ex service folks but don't it change when you are on the other side.:ugh:

Notwithstanding late emergent work (that found during the engine run and test flight phase) I don't understand why today's emergent work should cause such delays. Its called planning. After about half a dozen aircraft through the system you should know what the average is as a percentage of the known planned package. Then you add it to the planned package and you have your program. Then add the right level of manpower to fit in the available days. Usually worked for me and my exceptionally good team.:ok:

Sharmine

[TonkaEngO]

Sharmine

If only someone had thought of that - staring us in the face the whole time as well - guess we could have done with a little guidance in our planning huh?

The days of getting away with adding some fat to the TRT to allow for average slippage/ac have long gone. You get total time for all tasks divided by hours/day into a final TRT. Any emergent work is overtime - be it blue suit (generally paid in TOIL) or civvy in £.

[sharmine]

I see why you are always on time and always on budget then:ugh: and of course your civvies have no incentive to entice overtime. Or do they:}

Its that engine change on the day before handover that gets you every time. Might also be why tight TRT never work, your on a loser from day one.

Sharmine

[Speedy Brace]

Notwithstanding late emergent work (that found during the engine run and test flight phase) I don't understand why today's emergent work should cause such delays. Its called planning. After about half a dozen aircraft through the system you should know what the average is as a percentage of the known planned package. Then you add it to the planned package and you have your program. Then add the right level of manpower to fit in the available days. Usually worked for me and my exceptionally good team.

yes the tornado fleet is aging and each airframe is individual in character.
Emergent work / snags used to run along these line. 1. identify snag (eg crack in panel) 2. chat to cpl then stop drill crack if required , do paper work. job done.

Now because of a pulse line where one team of riggers hands over to another at each pulse new system employed via lean. 1. identify snag. 2 raise papwerwork for someone in the review cell to sort out. 3. review cell then tell you to change panel ( sometimes without leaving thier warm office to look at said snag physicaly. 4 demand new item if available 5 on reciept of item find out if it fits is dressed properly, 6 if not work item to said size and dress with correct fittings 7 send item to paint. 8 on reciept of item from paint fit.
Now can anyone see why snag take longer?
Snags have risen for the simple fact that a servicing team no longer has ownership of A/C during servicing and connot make engineering decissions anymore. The civvis do that.
All in all more snags ( no witchunts) more time taken to do a simple task, increas TRT. cost effective or what? factor in manpower shortages and spares and it all makes for a fun day in the office.
I just wish someone would get off their arse and get along to a servicing team without the station hanger on'rs and ask questions when not in earshot of managment with career captions flashing.

when are we goig to wake up and lift our heads above the account ledger....

If it was down to saving money, scrape the tornado, eurofighter, and hire US A/C from lockhead No maintenance teams no special tooling, No planning for servicing required (that should get rid of 'orrible engineers and desk jockys)just throw them away and hire new ones when required.


rant off
spelling mistakes due to dyslexia