Efforts to improve aviation readiness
By Susan Brink, Public Affairs Specialist, NADEP Jacksonville

The Naval Aviation Readiness Integrated Improvement Program (NAVRIIP) has made its way to the Naval Air Depot Jacksonville (NADEP JAX), Fla. The team is currently at the Depot gathering information in preparation for the kick-off of “Boots on the Ground” (BOG), which will take place the week of May 20, 2002.

This process all started when the Chief of Naval Operations tasked Commander, Naval Air Forces to implement a comprehensive program to make fundamental process changes in the way enabling resources are provided to CONUS non-deployed aviation commands in support of training and readiness objectives during the Inter-Deployment Training Cycle. This initiative is called NAVRIIP. The NAVRIIP team has been tasked to define, attain and sustain near and long term non-deployed aviation readiness goals. They will be trying to balance and align interactions among O-level maintenance, I-level maintenance and the logistics infrastructure that support them. They will also be identifying opportunities for leveraging non-deployed naval aviation readiness process improvements in other U.S. Navy programs including surface and subsurface.

Three cross-functional teams (CFT) were developed to operate under NAVRIIP to address challenges (barriers) brought forward, resulting from a review of the end-to-end process. The requirement of keeping aircraft ready to fly requires involvement from many commands within the Navy. Processes are being reviewed to determine a commands involvement, efficiency of the process, and any barriers hindering the process.

As part of this program, the CFT2 team (the Providers) met in Jacksonville on March 18, 2002, to review progress made at other sights the CFT teams are currently working on, breaking down barriers affecting non-deployed aviation readiness. CFT2 is led by Rear Admiral Stephen Heilman, Assistant Commander for Aviation Depots and Rear Admiral Mike Finley, Commander, Naval Inventory Control Point. In attendance from the Depot were Executive Officer Captain David Beck, Director of Quality Commander Ron Bethmann, and the Propulsion and Power Engine In-service Engineering Department Head Rick Reckert.

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“Select barriers, hard ones that will make a difference”, Heilman said in his opening remarks welcoming the group. Once barriers are identified, the teams can make every effort to streamline processes to benefit all parties across the Navy that are involved. Most of the day, the team brainstormed and reviewed possible barriers that pertain to aircraft entitlement for training, customer wait time, cannibalization, and trained manpower.

When Reckert was asked about the importance of this program, he stated, “Under NAVRIIP and in particular CFT 2 we are a key "Provider" organization. As a result, the products and services we provide are paramount in affecting Non-deployed readiness. It is imperative that we continuously improve our processes to reduce turn-around-time and issue quality products to the Warfighter so that we positively impact their ability to "train to fight". That's why we exist!”

The BOG kick-off will provide the team the opportunity to actually meet with the people and get hands-on experience with processes. Hearing from the employees who actually do the work will help the team streamline processes throughout the Navy. To improve readiness, we must be able to find ways to provide the necessary tools to the people, at the right time, to meet the high level of readiness that is demanded to support our country.

-- USN --