1. At the Station Arrivals Brief last week, the Staish told the audience that he was fed up with reading what's going on at his station on Pprune.

2. Good evening Sir.
or
2(a). Good morning Staish's Adj. Tea white nun.

Okay. Select bold to indicate anger...

Next week, the Lean Teams are going to look at how we can get our aircraft serviceable more efficiently. ie with less people, low morale, half the shift on gate guard, lack of spares, less time on the ground, passengers sat in the terminal, etc.

They are going to discuss a revolutionary way to deal with a Herc returning to Lyneham. It shuts down on Bay 1, the crew are debriefed, aircraft A/F'd and refuellled. Then...wait for it...the aircraft is towed to Bay 2, where the rectifications will be carried out. Then...it is towed to Bay 3 where it it fitted with the correct role.

STOP!!!

This idea is utter bollocks!

If you are still discussing this idea at lunchtime on Day 1 then you will be the laughing stock of the RAF.

Staish, sir. This is what some of your top people are doing in your name. Under your command. No doubt timed to coincide with the New Years Honours list.

PS. This was a revolutionary idea...er...about 100 years ago, for manufacturing industry. These are not Ford Model T's. These are 40 ton transport aircraft, and the bays don't line up, and we'lll have to stow the power set 3 times, and the tug drivers are civvies who don't work for Eng Wing anyway etc etc

:{

PPS. I am not 'resistant to change' or an 'obstacle' or even a 'weevil' (we've always done it this way)

You may think you'd be well rid of me on Tranche 2 redundancy.


You'd be wrong.



Don\'t forget to let the Inertial Nav gyros run down for 20 mins before you move the aircraft!

There, take the morning off.

Well done everyone.

SPHLC

That must rank as one of the most barking mad ideas I think I have heard for quite some time.

What kind of halfwits come up with things like this ?

Safety_Helmut

You are taking the p155 surely? 16hrs flying for 30 mins MCT?

This clever scheme was brought to you by the bearded wonder from Simpler (you don't want to know how much Simpler are making out of all this). He also brought you the "Waterspider", and many others you wouldn't believe.

According to him, an aircraft move is a one man task (driving the tug) and takes less than a minute. Actually, the first time the idea came up he told us we should TAXI the aircraft from bay to bay. He also reckons that the reason not a single airline uses this system is because "RAF Lyneham are light years ahead of any airline".

It really is all very clever.

If you haven't already, check out this link for more details:
http://www.simpler.com/case-studies/...rshipLean.html

I particularly like the final line.

Presumably they do know that it's winter right now in the Islas Malvinas? Not the best time to conduct MCT......

Last line is too true, but only if their airships don't want:

a. Flying to take place

b. People to remain in uniform (although ....)

c. The military of all colours and variants to partake in trust me tones' (can never get an apostophe in the rght place ..) next adventure.

etc etc. :(

Oh my god.....where is that utterly horse!!!!! article from? What was the brief to "Simpler" then? I'm assuming it was sack lots of people, save lots of money and it doesn't really matter if we ever get any aircraft on the line? If so, bravo! Job well done. That was a few million quid well spent. I'm no expert, but I'd rather have a happy workforce and serviceable aircraft than a happy management consultant and unserviceable aircraft. But then what would I know....

Still.....at least you've all been "encouraged and empowered" by the new system.
You could "lean" that phrase down to "sacked" though I guess....

I did like the closing line though.....surely given the roaring "success" of this system, sentiments such as those expressed in that line could be construed of sabotage or at least the encouragment of sabotage....?

:mad:

re: simpler. first clue that these people dont know what the hell they are talking about is when in the first paragraph it is said that there is only one aircraft type operated from lyneham. dont even try to tell me that you can treat the k and j as one type when it comes to engineering. each has its own separate issues regarding engineering, you cannot just jump between the two. does oc eng even realise that we have j's now and that it isnt a 50 aircraft fleet of k's anymore?

Well here we are almost 1 year down the line from the survey done for Simpler in Eng wing, and guess what the hangar is still cold, the tools are still inadequate, the infrastructure is still bad, communication is still poor and tools stilll do not match the job.. The tradesmen are not empowered or encouraged and to a man hate LEAN and everything it stands for. It has destroyed Eng Wing ( never mind we will just change the name to Forward Support Wing). We have the worse rate of S aircraft ever and the lowest morale I have ever seen. The guys are happier doing Gate guard or going to Basrah than working on HLS or FLECS. The LEAN Rapid Improvement Events are a total waste of time, the outcome is already decided by OC FSW (OBE). All the troops want to do is be able to fix aircraft 24/30 & 47/70 used to manage it. If this is speading to the rest of the RAF God help us. Can some one in power please put a stop to this madness.

Nice to see the system (LEAN) of only working on the aircraft that are scheduled to fly the next day work so well on the day they wanted multiple frames on 30 mins readiness.
2 hours after the time stated they would be ready we received ours. Thank god there were no lives at risk.
What a complete shambles we are. We are not a business; we are here to wait until we are needed. We should be ready 24 hours a day. Maybe we should change R1 to be
Ready to move within the time it will take to get a frame tech ready.
That way if I get called to go at 3 in the morning I can go back to bed and then take my family on a few days holiday to prepare them for my imminent standown through lack of frames.

As a small note to SPHLC
Welcome back me old bithicuss
Just no more danger (you know what) OK

Can someone confirm that if an aircraft falls down after the first sortie of the day and the following 4 or so trips are then lost (spare? bwahahahahahahahaha!!!) from that line, then the stats monkeys will still claim this as 100% serviceability for the day?

:confused:

I'm just confused as to how the powers that be can make such grandiose claims of serviceability when all of us know that it is worse than it has ever been. I'm not sure who we're trying to fool really....

It gets worse...

Following her promotion, a certain person who doesn't get very much praise from me is posted to the DLTP at HQ STC. She will then be responsible for rolling out this garbage across the whole triservice engineering environment. The RAF will soon be a macrocosm of RAF Lyneham

...but I'll be working for a new employer with just a pension to remind me of the good old days.

Lean is biting our ass at Waddington now as well.

Our new see off team comprises of 40 percent more manpower but now takes twice as long. Basically the five lads who would have done the see off and any crew in snags have to sit in the van and watch the new "lean" two man team do the see off on their own.

It takes the two of them twice as long to move the gse and bottles around as it did the five. However the five still have to wait in case there is a crew in snag. But if anyone waiting for snags helps the see off team it aint "lean".

What a great system. At least the new FLM's from Cosford will have something to do when they turn up.:ok:

But somewhere in the hangar is a big board proving that it saves loads of man hours and footsteps.

Leaning my arse!

Its Thursday

Five or six skilled aircraft technicians that should really be on gate guard, have spent 4 days discussing towing aircraft around to waiting servicing teams.

So far, they have established that it will take more people, twice as long.

Bloody Marvellous.

Take Friday off. You've earnt it.

PS. On a fleet of 50 aircraft, there was ONE C130J Rigger on shift today. (Okay, a fleet of 25)

Quite Lean I suppose!

PPS. You need two people to go up a ladder.

:{

As they say, there's always bl**dy one...

LEAN?
 

Here's how it goes thru' the Supply system.

R&D, S&M Sqn RAF Anywhere.

Wagon comes in, box 1 is offloaded, box 1 is unpacked, box 1 is brought on charge, box 1 is linked with paperwork, box 1 is issued/put into stock. Box 2 is offloaded etc etc. In the meanwhile the PFDS wagon (which has to go around several other units to drop off and pick up) sits waiting for the full consignment to come off. The boxes are removed in the order they are found REGARDLESS OF PRIORITY. When it was queried by (experienced) R&D staff as to why they couldn't carry on with the system of: Off load all freight, priorities on one shelf, routine on the other. Then deal with all priorities immediately followed by routine in slow time, they were told that "that's batching, we don't do batching under LEAN". Oh and LEAN dosn't recognise the concept of a multi-item box, so one box, one item, how much will that cost! No Sqn stackers as they are a "middle man" and that's not LEAN, instead you will ring the "Demands Cell" (circa 1977) and place your demand, which will then be delivered by an "enhanced" Fwd delivery, to RECTS control, as that is the only place where someone is located all the time. These guys will also be responsible for delivering to everyone else on the unit, no collects as that isn't LEAN either, can't send a techie to do astackers job. Between all this we will have to carry out guard, because they can't recruit enough of the MGS as they pay is crap and the other security people can't carry weapons so the servicemen need to do it. We will be submitting all our leave passes, claims etc thru' JPA, whilst queing up to pay extra for a meal we used to get normally (anyone been to Halton lately?) As someone stated before, I am not resistant to change, after 27 years you get used to it, but the next time I hear someone say "look at his stuff I have invented it keeps you warm and cooks food, I am a god" well I'll bat them around the heid with my new invention ............. its round and it roll's I will call it the Sqouggle!

Nope, thats wrong. What they will claim is that of 100% AVAILABILITY. Id the aircraft is on the line then it is available. It doesn't need to be servicable, just available

The morale of the groundcrew at Lyneham is now the lowest I have ever seen. Does ANYONE care? Another few weeks and all the management chain that started this disaster will have been posted, promoted and awarded, others will be left to try and pick up the the mess left behind and make it into something workable. However, the can do, will do attitude of the groundcrew has gone, the morale has gone, the team ethos has gone, the sense of belonging has gone, perhaps all forever. The attitude of people who got dicked for extra guard duty was 'good, at least I am not in work'. For most grouncrew at Lyneham it is now just a job that pays the bills. Service Ethos? don't make me laugh. SAD TIMES ME THINKS How do our flyers feel about all this? COMMENTS PLEASE.

:( :( :( :( :(

Flyers feel......bored and annoyed, because we're not....flying. The fact that 2 pilots recently flew 8,000 miles to MPA, just to find a serviceable 'frame to do MCT on says it all. I find it incredulous that an individual can get away with such abject vandalism in this day and age - not just get away with it, but get f****ing promoted as well!!!!!

Never mind - I have enough hours for the ATPL, and BA are getting desparate.....even the paltry sum I'd recieve on PVR would pay for the exams.....

16B

Thank you for your reply 16B, The groundcrew just hope you flyers know we are not to blame.

PS enjoy the Top Table to say good bye to pearson concerned

:yuk:

Just had it confirmed by an escapee, down here on the rock, that the bay to bay "LEAN" A/C prep, role and rect system is going ahead. What daft c**t let that happen. It's about as lean as a michelle McManus. I hope it gets sorted before my return otherwise I will seriously have to consider some yellow and black fun handle action.
Shoot the lot of them if it does happen, simpler my ar$e.:* :* :*

To quote a certain senior officer from the Ops side, everyone is happy, things are running well and if the 'whining' FS's & other SNCO's would stop complaining then things would be perfect. Then he asked the SNCO's who he was addressing if they had any questions. The mind boggles.:mad:

We know it's not you, Purr Harder - we know exactly who is to blame, and we salute the efforts you guys make in ridiculous circumstances.

16B

I'm free. I won't have to see her again. Right, lets get it sorted.

Ops officers, I was there. Clueless buggers.

The ‘whining FSs and SNCOs’ will stop whining and complaining when Flight Safety, Health & Safety, Service Ethos, and Quality stop being compromised on a daily basis. But until then I for one hope they continue to whine, I can only imagine the stress trying to meet the programme with scant resources and then having their professionalism attacked by people such as the quoted Ops Officer. If you don't like what they are doing, try visting HLS/FLEC and running one of the trade desks or the flight line for a night SIR. Still once Trance 2 is announced the whining will stop, as to a man all of the SNCOs in the frame have applied to leave (and you think we have problems now!!!!). Most who have applied have said if they don’t get redundancy they will go anyway. DOES ANYONE CARE?

:(

Oi! Read the quote properly and stop blaming the ops officers! I don't know exactly who this refers to, but there aren't any ops officers that are senior officers. It's more likely to be someone with a brevet...

I was one of those Whining SNCO's , And it was a Senior Ops officer, So whilst I appreciate that not all Ops officers are clueless, This bloke certainly was.

He was amazed to hear that the Engineers were to a man not very happy, infact his first words were "It's good to see all the problems have been ironed out, and we are seeing happy faces again"

At which point he was invited to take a seat, and we put him right on a few matters.

Whether anything gets done I don't know, but he left there under no illusions that there was a serious problem with the engineering at Lyneham.

It seems that those at the top pushing this through have all gone to the General Melchard school of management - "If it fails - completely inoring the bare facts will get us through, bahhhhh..... stout fellows!"

:rolleyes:

I must back Opso up here; The DOCs (ably assisted by their hardworking Ops Staff) take a huge chunk of the whinges by the aircrew. We all know why we don't have the aircraft tech ready, but the upper echelons are just sweeping it under the carpet!!

I really feel for the poor bloke taking over as OC Eng, I just hope he realises what a complete mess he will be in charge of.

He's going to be a busy boy though - he'll be the only engineer left on the unit!!

Could be worse, you could be saying "She's going to be a busy girl though - she'll be the only engineer left on the unit!!".

Whoever said 'Women and aircraft don't mix', was almost right. Should have said 'Women and aircraft management don't mix'.

Well the new OC Eng arrives on Monday for a 3 week handover... 2 and a half weeks of which she will be on leave for.

Welcome sir, you have a huge advantage over your predecessor, in that you can not POSSIBLY be as bad.

I have no vested interest in this, I will never work at Lyneham ever again, but PLEASE listen to the guys who have suffered so much over the past few months and put it right. It'll be easy if you just maintain a sense of practicality and remember what engineers are there to do.

Yours with the greatest sense of hope

Fatter Albert

Without getting too bogged down in semantics,'Senior Officer' ie Sqn Ldr or above. Those involved know who was meant. More LEAN news, the medics at EGDL will now be found in the Fire Section in the evening and weekends, the rumoured original idea was to withdraw medical cover completelyat night and weekends and call the Ambulance authority if there was an ac emergency. Lyneham is still the only MEDA in the RAF and the good book quite clearly states that medical cover will be provided at MEDA's 24/7. What is the RAF coming to.

I believe they tried withdrawing Medic cover at an engineering base in South Wales at night.......which lasted about a week!!

What is it going to take for these people to realise you can only make so many cuts before disaster strikes. We've trimmed, leaned, end to end(ed) front lined first etc etc etc....

Senior Officers - wake up and smell the coffee, you are not employed bythe RAF just to make cut after cut. You are meant to be leaders not bloody bean counters, go and get a spine from stores and bloody well use it to stand up to the idiocy!!

You can't handle the truth
 

With apologies to the director of the film ‘A FEW JOB MEN’ starring Jack Nichloson as Col Nathan R Jessep.

To the Senior Officer from Ops (who was not an Ops Officer)


Senior Officer from Ops
‘I want the truth, I think I’ m entitled to the truth’

Aircraft maintainers
‘YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH’

Aircraft maintainers
‘ Sir, We live in a world that has aircraft, and those aircraft have to be maintained, Who’s gonna do it? You? We have greater responsibility than you can fathom. You weep for a lost task and curse the engineers. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know. A lost task due to an unsafe, unserviceable aircraft – while tragic – probably saves lives, and our existence – while grotesque and incomprehensible to you – saves lives! You don’t want the truth because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want us maintaining that aircraft, you need us maintaining that aircraft. We use words like quality, professionalism and safety as the backbone of a life spent maintaining aircraft, you use them as a punchline! We have neither the time nor inclination to explain yourselves to a man who rises and sleeps under the very blanket of aircraft serviceability we provide and the questions the manner in which we provided it. We would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise we suggest you pick up a spanner and work a shift. Either way we don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to.

Senior Officer from Ops
‘Did the FSs and SNCos whine?’

Aircraft maintainers
‘ They did their job’

Senior Officer from Ops
‘DID THE FSs AND SNCOs WHINE,


Aircraft maintainers
‘ YOUR DAMN RIGHT THEY DID’

Sheer poetry.

But is there an alternate ending that I don't know about?

'cos Jack Nicholson gets arrested and Tom Cruise gets to shag Demi Moore!


Latest News:-

8 PVR's going in within the next couple of weeks. All riggers.

I believe the new OC Eng/DSW/FSW or whatever he is called these days arives soon, will be interested in his initial comments.

Hope those 8 Rigger PVRs go in after tranche 2 is announced, where hopefully some of Lynehams downtrodden engineers get lucky. Maybe the new OCESW or whatever he's called these days will realise what went before when he does'nt have enough riggers to man the pumps evan at lean manning.

Lyneham Familes Day
 

True Story

(Mass e mail to Sqn Bosses) :-

All section heads are to go to minimum manning levels in order to release personnel to attend Station Families Day

(reply e mail from Engineering Wing section heads) :-

Can you send us some more personnel so that we can then declare ourselves at mimimum manning level.

:}

It has gone very quiet recently. Is there anything happening?

In the next couple of weeks the biggest 'top table' for some time will be held in the SNCO's mess with up to 30 techies having a 'redundancy top table'. The speeches should be quite good. Was thinking of getting a video camera.