WR-ALC Safety seeing lasting change in processes with AoP

The Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex Safety Office has been changing the way it does business.

Since 2014, the organization has implemented the tenets of Art of the Possible, a constraints-based management system, to improve mishap investigations, recommendations, inspections, hazard abatement, swipe samples, operating instruction review, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration Reporting.

James Hogan, Safety director in the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex Safety Office, said the processes were chosen because the office was having difficulty meeting Air Force requirements, controlling its Work in Process and lagging in responsiveness to customers. 

“We were enabled to visually see the WIP building up in certain areas, allowing us to perform data driven targeted process improvement and level loading amongst our staff,” he said. “We continue to improve by focusing on our AoP machine maturity, utilizing members of our team to understand the machine output data, and use it to continually improve.”

Hogan said AoP allows the office to develop and maintain repeatable processes that have both short and long term benefits for their customers.

 “These processes have enabled us to become data driven and have allowed our organization to be transparent for our customers, stakeholders and leadership,” he said.  “Since implementing AoP in our area, we were able to reduce our WIP by 60% and consistently maintain, identify and find solutions to our constraints.”

Hogan said the process improvements help his organization by increasing its throughput and improving visibility to the organization and its customers. 

“As our safety teams experiment with AoP, they continue to mature as a team and have bought into the process and goal,” he said. “The whole organization is working to continue efforts to make improvements in all of our own processes, thus creating a society of problem solvers.”

http://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_sustainment_ctr/publication/afsch60-101/afsch60-101.pdf.