AFLCMC planning tempo quickens

  • Published
  • By Derek Kaufman
  • 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  The "champion" shepherding planning for the standup of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center says input from the workforce is critical for the proposed new organization to be successful.

Col. Art Huber, vice commander of the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, is overseeing the monumental planning effort to be ready for the planned initial operational capability of AFLCMC by Oct. 1, 2012.

"We're forging the foundation for this new organization now and we have a responsibility to both America's warfighters and taxpayers to do this right," Col. Huber said. "Our core planning team has considerable cross-functional experience located at bases across AFMC. However they need participants with good ideas, questions and concerns to share them."

Colonel Huber noted some 500 professionals are on the teams working to define roles and responsibilities and ready to execute the tasks to stand up an entirely new organization. "We're doing so with a vision to develop a single center responsible for total life cycle management of weapon systems."

One thing the Colonel wanted to make absolutely clear is the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center's organization and approach will be completely new.

"The AFLCMC will be an entirely new unit, rather than one that inherits its lineage from any of its constituent predecessors," Colonel Huber said. The new unit will include some 26,000 people located at 75 geographic locations.

As part of a command-wide restructure, Air Force Materiel Command officials announced Nov. 2, 2011 plans to consolidate certain missions and activities, reducing the number of centers from 12 to five. The plan aims to reduce overhead costs and redundant layers of staff and is expected to generate $109 million annually in Air Force savings. The Air Force announced Feb. 29 the nomination of  Lt. Gen. C.D. Moore II, AFMC vice commander, for appointment as commander of AFLCMC.

AFLCMC will have oversight of missions now performed by the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB, Mass., the Air Armament Center at Eglin AFB, Fla., and three Aerospace Sustainment Directorates located at Robins, Hill, and Tinker AFBs. The entire workforce of these organizations will report to the AFLCMC, eliminating layers of management overhead.

Joining AFLCMC will be the Air Force Security Assistance and Cooperation Directorate, formerly the Air Force Security Assistance Center. It will continue the foreign military sales mission from its Wright-Patt location. Additionally, AFLCMC will include a newly designated Propulsion Directorate lead at Tinker AFB. This directorate will oversee engine acquisition work performed at Wright-Patterson and engine sustainment work accomplished at Tinker.

Program offices that today are organizationally aligned under aeronautical sustainment directorates at the three Air Logistics Centers will report to program executive officers at AFLCMC acquisition directorates, Colonel Huber said. The 66th Air Base Group at Hanscom AFB and the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson will report to AFLCMC.

"Under the new organizational construct, it's important to note that the fundamental acquisition and sustainment processes that we execute will not change initially," Colonel Huber said. "However, who executes these processes and the 'touch points' between locations and between centers will change in many instances. Over time, we hope to standardize them across the Center and continuously improve them."

Planning teleconferences and integration meetings between AFLCMC implementation team members are ongoing. An Integrated Master Schedule has been created to help document, prioritize and phase tasks, once the implementation decision to proceed is finalized.

"As we consolidate functional responsibilities, we will need to ensure the resources are in place to take on the mission. We need to be careful not to duplicate efforts. We need to ensure that reporting chains make sense and are consistent with statutory requirements. We need to ensure we don't create functional stovepipes or processes that limit flexibility of program managers and PEOs to make those critical decisions related to requirements, test, performance, cost and schedule," Colonel Huber said.