ENGINEERING LOGISTICS


THE BENEFITS OF TEAMING


A technician performs a system check in the cockpit of a UH-72A Lakota at the Redstone Army Airfield in Huntsville, AL, in March. The logistics engineering program demonstrated that pairing an engineer with the logistics team improved the integration of the engineering and logistics capabilities and helped Soldiers execute their mission more effectively. (Photo by Joseph Carmichael)


engineering project in 2003 after identifying the need to pur- chase numerous, costly aviation replacement parts.


“Ken Dulaney, former chief of the AMCOM Industrial Opera- tions Division, and I discussed getting our engineers to better analyze the costs of the replacement parts and determine what solution we could provide to the item managers while reducing the cost to the taxpayer,” Chronister said.


Dulaney, Chronister and others met with AMCOM, the PEOs and AMRDEC to discuss the idea of using logistics engineer- ing to solve similar issues with other organizations prior to the start of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq but encountered cultural challenges within the functions of logistics and engi- neering. Te two disciplines were organizationally stovepiped, he explained, with little interaction between the two. Each orga- nization had a different culture and a “this is the way we have always done things” mentality. Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom and the high cost of aviation sustainment forced the two to come together, but the cultures clashed. “Te cultures were very strong and change was difficult,” Chronister


56 Army AL&T Magazine July-September 2015


added. “But if you really want to do good things for the Army and our Soldiers, you have to be adaptable and you have to be open to change.”


PILOT PROGRAM TAKES OFF After five years of discussions and meetings, a formal working group was established in 2008 to develop the approach that culminated in a pilot program with the UH-60 Black Hawk program office.


“Data, people and leadership were the keys in getting the pilot program off the ground,” Chronister said. Te team had to identify what was being replaced at what interval and at what cost to perform the proper return-on-investment analysis to determine if it was more economical to continue to buy as-is or invest in redesign, he explained. “And everyone had to be com- fortable enough to understand we were a team trying to save the Army money and get a better product for our Soldiers.”


“Te initial response from our weapon system team members and logisticians was ‘I don’t need a logistics engineer,’ ” said


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