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)

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.

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.

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

NO!:ugh: Its as simple as that!

“Applying Lessons from Lean Production Theory to Transit Planning”
 

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

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!:)

Army Scalie supporting Crab Movers
 

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:)

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:

wot
 

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

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.

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.

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

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.

real cost of pulse
 

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..

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.

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:

"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.

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.

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:

cornish-stormrider
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.

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.