Fixing Healthcare, Just Like Fixing Airplanes?

With all the talk lately of American healthcare troubles it got me thinking on the subject of problem solving. That IS the goal I think; but it seems that very few if any of the myriad techniques available are being applied, other than the amateurish principle of “trial and error,” which may well be the worst method there is. I’ve heard people in the administration actually say things like, “The problem is SO catastrophic that we NEED to do something, ANYTHING; we can always “tweak” it as we go later.”

Similarly, back in “the stupid old days,” the US military routinely used the “field and forget” method to employ new weapons systems,” a fiasco of a way of doing things that usually ended up as “field and fix.” The annals of our military history abound with horror stories of hastily-employed weapons; the extent of their failings discovered at the worst possible time, that is, “when the weapon met the war.”

The “fog of war” is murky enough without making it worse with untested equipment, yet until relatively recently we routinely did this foolishness. Usually it happened because of politics (sound familiar?), or where some high placed officials thought THEY knew better than the REAL experts, the experts of course being the enlisted folks and officers who have to actually use the stuff.

During my time “in” I was around quite a bit of problem solving, which started with my time as a technician and technical supervisor. But all that turned out to be preparation for what I got into during the last half of my career, when I graduated from repairing individual planes to resolving issues involving entire fleets of aircraft. If I’m completely honest though, rarely was I the actual “solver,” but always I was certainly part of “the problem solving process,” a process that invariably involved input from a team of “solvers.”

I got onto the whole “big picture” problem solving ride by accident. It started as I entered into the last 13 years of service, the half way point of my time in the military. From there my career path meandered to the extraordinary, at least compared to a lot of other airmen’s careers.

My job path took off on this “merry tangent” in 1989 when I left the position of shift leader for a new job in the Quality Assurance Office after being recruited into it by the master sergeant I eventually replaced. (I caught his attention one morning as he observed the no-nonsense way I handled my troops during the weekly “FOD walk”). During my next 6 years in the Quality Office I also took on the ancillary responsibility of overseeing a contract field team of around 25 or so civilian technicians whose job it was to strip out most of the original 30-year-old electronics in our vaunted C-130 “Hercules” cargo plane, and installing modern systems in their place.

What I found the most interesting about that 6 year QA gig was constantly running into new problems, some big, some small. There were about 80 airplanes on our flightline (including the Air Guard’s)—a lot of C-130s. With so many “birds” it took several years to modify all of them; so for quite some time we had a mix of newly modified aircraft, along with “birds” still creaking along with 30 and 40 year old technology.

As lead base for C-130s, often times we were first to get the newest systems, on a trial basis so to speak. In effect, we were the guinea pigs for the rest of the fleet; as such, I was confronted with glitches and gremlins almost on a daily basis. My job was to research these malfunctions, in the short term find out the “whys,” and finally, to come up with answers and even resolutions.

It was during this time of continuous problem solving that I began to simultaneously submit my “fixes” by way of the Air Force Suggestion Program, as well as to the primary approving agency being the Air Logistics Center at Warner Robins AFB in Georgia.

I remember the first time I had a suggestion approved just a few months before I joined the QA team. It was to modify an incorrect troubleshooting tree for engine oil pressure transmitters. It wasn’t all that complicated, but months later, seeing the pages amended in the technical orders to reflect MY changes was quite heady. In a small way I had affected the entire fleet of several hundred C130s. I felt pretty good about that, and about the little award check I got out of it as well.

The stars lined up perfectly when I joined the QA shop and found myself responsible for the proper installation of a host of new aircraft electronic systems. As part of these responsibilities I worked with the Lockheed “mod team” to write the installation workbook requiring that I saw and or touched every new wire bundle, screw and rivet that went into the plane. As part of that workbook I made it mandatory that I personally sign off the okay to reinstall every panel to make sure there was no debris left behind it before they were allowed to button it back up. There was a good chance that I would be the last person to inspect those areas for years to come; and believe me, I felt the pressure of knowing that. When it comes to aircraft work there is no such thing as being too critical; it either meets spec or it doesn’t. My very last signature was the one I made on the acceptance sheet which brought each airplane out of depot status back into operation with the Air Force.

Earlier I spoke of how the military has made a science of properly fielding new weapons systems (in fact, the army has a university devoted to perfecting and teaching acquisition at Ft Lee, VA); BUT, when installing so many new systems onto a 30 year old platform like our C-130s were, while still keeping much of the deteriorating original wiring and archaic electrical power, in the aftermath of that we were bound to have to do some major “tweaking.”

Indeed, MY CFT guys put a LOT of new gear into those old planes: Let’s see, one of the most complicated installations was a brand-new redundant Self-Contained Nav System that also provided attitude information to the flight directors; the team also put in a host of flat panel and digital instruments to replace the old spinning dial analog indicators, a new autopilot, GCAS (ground collision avoidance), a partial upgrade to aircraft power, a much improved radar altimeter and Doppler radar, as well as several new radios and associated antennas and secure voice kits. Toward the end of my tenure we also started to put in GPS, TCAS (aircraft collision avoidance) and electronic countermeasures to include the chaff and flare dispensers. After almost 15 years since my involvement I’ve forgotten some of the systems MY team installed, but per aircraft all that work took hundreds of man-hours, thousands of feet of wire, countless hundreds of wire pins and terminals, and scores of connectors; and it all had to be done perfectly and on schedule, aircraft after aircraft. All those long overdue upgrades were bound to lead to a host of problems, and boy, did it ever!

From 90 to 91 I took a short break from “my path” by going to war; during the two years it took those 7 months to pass I became a regular maintainer again. After the war I returned to Little Rock to find shocking changes in my absence; the Air Force had gone through a major organizational and philosophical shakeup—maintenance had become completely decentralized; there was no longer a single colonel in charge of maintaining all 64 aircraft. Overnight each of the four squadron commander’s took over complete responsibility for their own birds’ upkeep.

Not only that, but a new concept called TQM, or Total Quality Management (a term now long out of vogue), had become the latest management fad. Under it, all of us once scary QA boogiemen lost our scariness and instead we became nerdy “quality facilitators.” Lucky for us though, our Logistics Group commander was shrewd enough not to dismantle us the way other C-130 bases had done immediately to their QA shops once the reign of TQM had begun. The fact that our QA pretty much remained intact paid off big as far as I’m concerned.

I must admit though that I wasn’t sorry to see the days of inspection quotas ended; I never liked doing all those tedious exams anyway. Instead of inspecting individuals’ work (making them extremely nervous!) and checking out test equipment, we began concentrating on “process improvement.” And ho hum, I guess we did some of that, but what really excited me was getting all that new electronics correctly installed, and just as important, finding and fixing all the associated glitches and bugs.

And HERE is why our commanders were so brilliant in keeping us QA boys around—we became the corporate knowledge bank, the go-to-guys for oddball problems, and the overseers of high interest taskings from the command.

There is a very scary truism about airplanes: You don’t know what’s screwed up if you don’t know what’s screwed up. This strange axiom became obvious when our wing became the only one still conducting so-called acceptance inspections of those C-130s returning from the depot facility at Ogden, Utah. We had just way too many airplanes to let our contract field team do all the modifications, so Ogden and Warner Robins did them as well. The problem is that the colonel in charge at Ogden became upset with us because we were the only ones complaining about their work. I would go out to an airplane just arrived from Utah and fill page after page of squawks on a legal pad, and many of them were grounding write ups (I once found over 100 writeups). The Ogden colonel was so irked at us that he paid for me and my right hand man, a brilliant avionics troop by the name of Shawn Dougherty, to come to his facility so he could show US how wonderful HIS installers were. As it turned out, we were not the least bit impressed and in fact showed them the many errors of their ways. At first their resentment was disconcerting, but eventually I think we won them over with our earnestness.

The point is that WE KNEW what to look for because we were were intimately familiar with every disturbed and new wire bundle and connector, so we immediately recognized the improprieties, but we were the only inspectors left at the wing level who continued to do these post-depot inspections. A chilling thought—what about the OTHER aircraft never looked at with the same knowledgeable eyes? As far as all the other users the installation was A-okay. The only actual acceptance inspection done at the depot was done by an aircrew that had no clue about what was physically done to the aircraft and whose only worry was to accomplish the checkflight. As far as they were concerned, if the systems worked on that flight, then it was good to go. In other words, “Ignorance is NOT bliss.” …shudder…

And NOW, to finish up this LONG post—my counterpart, Shawn Dougherty, and I, began to LOOK for problems or just ways to make maintenance actions less cumbersome and more efficient. Here’s what we learned: if you stay your ass in the office, you will NEVER learn a thing. You GOT to find out what you DON’T know. A common fault of problem solvers is that they THINK they KNOW; they DON’T. Following that premise we made our rounds to the flightline, to the squadrons, to the shops, to the contractors, all with the goal of talking to “the experts.”

Hardly a day went by where some sergeant or senior airman didn’t come up to me to complain about some new glitch or malfunction. It got to the point that troops seeing me drive by would jog over and flag me down, something they NEVER used to do when I wore my white boogieman QA hat. They loved that I always had a sympathetic ear and asked lots of questions. Complaints, moans, and groans—I LOVED it. If they had a problem I WANTED to hear about it. Their squawks became my bread and butter.

To finish blowing my own horn, we began to establish a reputation, especially once all the approved suggestion awards began to roll in along with the award checks. Every month during commander’s call Shawn and I would receive not one or two checks, but usually 5 or 6. This went on month after month, for almost three years; and once the word got out that WE were the people to see to get things fixed, even more folks approached us with their tales of woe. I’m pretty sure our success inspired others to do the same thing. I loved it, being able to make a difference.

As I said, seldom if ever was I the one that came up with the fixes. Most of those ideas came from the same folks who came forward with the problems in the first place. Ask someone for a problem and chances are they can also tell you how to solve it.

But my REAL secret weapon in tackling especially big problems was my contract field team. Those fellows were incredibly brilliant at finding the best solutions. Most were retired military with decades of experience working on aircraft long before they started modifying planes as civilians. Whenever I approached them with a problem, I’d make my pitch, usually at the break table, and then I’d leave them to mull it over. Without exception, within a few days they’d have a workable solution, usually complete with diagrams and written procedures. They always told me that they wanted nothing in return since by contract everything they came up with officially belonged to Lockheed. It was a joke to them; they said they’d rather I have credit than Lockheed. Absolutely remarkable men!

In 1992 or 93 the base commander even chose me to be his Suggestor of the Year, or at least some one in the suggestion office did, not that I was even aware that such an award existed. It was nice but it could easily have gone to Shawn, since we collaborated on most of our projects. I always say that THE best idea I ever had was hiring him to work with me in QA.

I learned during those exciting times that my strong suit was seeing the brilliance in others and tapping into that brilliance as a primary resource; and I found that the best answers invariably come from the same folks who come forward with the problems in the first place. If the solution is the drink then I was the humble vessel. I did my job best by completely defining the problems and their scope, usually after that, what had to be done became obvious. I’m sure the answers to our healthcare dilemma can be found in exactly the same way; and not by a bunch of self-serving politicians and lobbyists who THINK they know the answers; THEY don’t.

Testing, My Last and BEST Job in the Air Force

From 1995 until my discharge in 2002, I managed and directed aircraft systems operational tests. Doing such a thing for so long wasn’t exactly good for my career progression, especially since I had already done six years of quality and project management before that; BUT, I found testing extremely satisfying and more enjoyable than I can tell you. It was so much fun in fact that I was reluctant to leave it for the more "mundane" work of the Air Force flight line. So, I didn’t; I stayed in testing until the very end of my military career.

My brand of test was operational. That means I made sure that whatever was assigned to me to test—whether it be a component, a procedure, a system, or even an entire airplane—that it was ready for REAL airman to fly and to fix and to fly again; and as operational testers, we used REAL airman to do this.

If the thing was new and about to go into full rate production, before it got to me it had already been tested by a whole host of development people. I was in effect the last tester in a battery of years of testing. You would think that by the time this stuff got to me that all that would be required was a tweak here and there. That’s NOT what usually happened though. I never ceased to be amazed by the obvious problems we’d uncover that had to be addressed before final fielding.

Operational test directors are usually recruited right off real world flight lines and from flying squadrons. I was an exception since I had come from years of doing other staff projects, such as aircraft modification and quality management.

In both test squadrons that I served with, my cubicle was in a room full of other cubicles. We probably spent less than half our time in them though, since our tests took us all over the world. I was an E8, a senior master sergeant, an enlisted fellow, and one of three enlisted avionics technician “experts,” but we had officer counterparts as well. Usually, we worked our tests as "teams," so that if a pilot needed enlisted maintenance expertise to test their systems, we were available; AND, if we needed pilot knowledge, the same held true for them. It was a very unique situation in the deeply rank concious military world, because as testers, we were pretty much equals regardless of rank.

Most of the enlisted directors were E7s and E8s, while the officer test directors—pilots and navigators for the most part—were captains and majors. The idea was to use our long experience in each of our respective fields to make sure no stone was left unturned when it came to making sure that what we tested was actually going to work in ALL intended settings and situations, to include extremes such as found in arctic and desert environments.

The concept of operational testing would seem easy to do in theory, but it never is in practice. When I signed up for it in the summer of ‘95 I figured all I’d need to do is put the system or component through its paces and see what happens, and in decades past that was exactly how new weapons and systems WERE tested, and with horrible and sometimes deadly results.

Over the decades, the military learned to use scientific methods to test, and that means understanding the concept of statistical data. I lost track of the number of classes I attended on the subject of scientific testing and all its jargon; to include such lingo as—sampling size, means, median, deviation, statistical significance et al, and most importantly, how to arrive at conclusions that excluded all the “noise.”

By the time the new weapons systems got to us operational testers it was a foregone conclusion that it WOULD be fielded, no matter what we found. Ours then, was NOT to provide a go or no-go, but to point out any last minute ways to improve our test subject before full production. Even so, I was almost always amazed at some of the obvious problems we’d discover so late in the production schedule. This was usually because, to reduce costs, developers love to use simulation, especially when it comes to software. It’s ironic really, since they are using software to test other software. Sometimes, though, you just got to put what you got through a REAL scenario, in the ACTUAL places, by the REAL airman who will eventually use the equipment.

Speaking of which, my most interesting and memorable test resulted from the failure of computer simulation to discover a software glitch in what was at the time a fairly new flight director on the venerable C-130 cargo transport aircraft. The failure was on a system called the SCNS, or Self-Contained Navigation System. When, by accident, this problem was discovered and then assigned to us, the 33rd Flight Test & Evaluation Detachment, to help test the “fix” for it, I found myself over a year’s time flying with one of the United States Air Force’s MOST professional flying organizations that I’ve ever been associated with, the 109th Airlift Wing.

More on that in my next post…

Part 3 of QA, Mr. Touchy Feely goes "TQM"

parts 1, and 2

When the Air Force put all of its eggs into the TQM basket in 1991 most QA shops simply stopped doing any more inspections. Happily, the Logistic Group commander at Little Rock did not instruct us to stop, even though it sort of went against what the rest of the Air Force C-130 world was doing. In fact, as far as I know, we were the only QA shop not to lose manpower at the inception of the Air Force's reckless dive into the shallow pool called Total Quality Management.

WE continued to inspect, but with a radically different mindset than before. Previously, we had a schedule of inspection tasks basically designed to police our maintenance force, to keep them on their toes through intimidation.

Then, after TQM became the watchword, we inspected NOT to maintain compliance, but to gather data points. Instead of inspecting we “measured.” In keeping with the hottest “quality” tenants at the time, our new job was to identify our organizational processes and THEN work on improving them.

“Continuous improvement,” another famous TQM phrase, meant that nothing was EVER good enough; but the only way to actually know if improvement was at hand was to measure the products resulting from our processes. “Products” meaning those items and services provided to our “customers” like “mission capable airplanes” for instance, and all the logistics that went into making those planes mission capable. Oh, and “customers” were defined as those availing of our data products, such as pilots, aircrew and maintenance personnel, and especially decision makers at all levels. Anyone making use of our measurement products were our customers.

Part of what all this meant is that I got me a new title, two to be exact. In the Air Force, everyone has one or more of them. It’s a requirement if only to be able to fill the “duty title” block on enlisted and officer performance reports, and by the way, having a good duty title is almost as crucial as the rating—the “fancier” the title the better chance at picking up the next higher rank. Previously, I had been a lowly inspector; now, I was a “quality manager” as well as an “avionics advisor.”

I still think getting rid of all those “keep ‘em on their toes” inspections was a bad idea, but honestly, my job in the nouveau quality shop was amazingly gratifying. Now, making workers feel uneasy by my very presence was no longer in play. In my new persona I was there to help make things work better, and I took on that assignment with total seriousness.

Our “big” headquarters boss, called Air Mobility Command, or AMC, was located “up the road” in Illinois at Scott AFB. AMC went right along with our commander’s decision to allow QA to continue inspecting, probably because of Little Rock’s unique position in the command—in several ways we were like no other C-130 base anywhere in the world.

For one thing, we were the “school house” for anyone in the world who flies the C-130, including many foreign air forces. Of our wing’s four flying squadrons, I'm not sure anymore but I believe two were devoted entirely to the purpose of training new pilots, navigators, loadmasters and flight engineers.

(Keep in mind that almost everything I describe here organizationally has now changed and changed again--THAT is the United States Air Force!)

Another LRAFB distinction was the sheer number of C-130s on our flight line. All together, including the Air Guard squadron, there were 5 squadrons of those big planes with as many as 16 to 18 “birds” per squadron. Imagine 90 gigantic Hercules lined up 4 deep. On days when most of the planes were at home it made for quite an impressive display.

With all those C-130s in one place, HQ AMC used to reach out and “use” Little Rock quite a bit for various “projects,” and when there were projects you would ALWAYS find QA people involved in their coordination, if not in their outright management. I loved it, because being in QA, I was constantly right in the middle of “the action.”

An additional significant uniqueness at Little Rock was the CFT or contract field team. The CFT at LRAFB set up shop there in the late 80s, and might still be there now for all I know. A division of Lockheed Martin provided our CFT. Their job was to modify C-130s with various upgrades, all most all of them involving electrical and avionics modifications.

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What made our CFT different from others in the AF was the unusually long time it stayed in continuous operation there--at least 10 years. It became institutionalized and was considered an asset to the wing because of the knowledge stored in all those "old heads" working there. I was considered an avionics "expert" by the wing, but I knew the real corporate knowldege was over there at the contract field team and I never hesitated to consult with them.

One of my “hats” in dealing with the CFT was QAR, or Quality Assurance Representative. Yep, another title, and one of my most favorite. As QAR, I kept an eye on virtually everything the field team did. For instance, I signed off on all the man-hours they expended, especially those designated as “over time.” But primarily, my job as QAR was to accept C-130s back into the USAF after they had been upgraded.

When an aircraft goes “under the knife” with a contract field team it goes into what’s called depot status. By going “into depot,” even though it never actually left the base, the plane no longer is counted on operational rolls. That’s important to the owning wing since they jealously measure the downtime of all their birds, and downtime is not good time.

I did more than simply sign the acceptance documents. I had a pager and I could expect to be called in to sign off “areas” about to be paneled up at any time between 6 am and 11 pm. I didn’t have to do that, but I insisted on it. As part of the mod plan—which was another rather extensive document that I signed off on—I inspected every “disturbed” area on the C-130 in work before it was “closed up” by the team. That’s because once some of those panels went on, many with as many as several score screws, no eyes might see that area again for years.

In other words, I never “bought” anything back for the Air Force unless I first saw, touched and felt every wire bundle, connector, tie-strap, splice, terminal, lacing, and clamp! That’s why they called me Mr. Touchy Feely.

xxx

Just as important was my fetish that all wire harnesses be separated and routed correctly so as never to fail due to chafing or exposure to heat sources. I could go on for paragraphs on all the ways an installation can fail. My guys installed so as NEVER to fail.

I wasn’t exactly unique in the way I did my job as QAR. Eventually, I met nearly every other Air Force C-130 QAR scattered at bases throughout the world. Almost all of them did their jobs exactly as I did, although not all of them insisted on inspecting every single area.

An interesting sidebar to all this is how I ended up getting a “free” trip to Ogden, Utah. I went there at the request of an air force colonel whom we immediately nicknamed “Colonel Burly Man.” Now that was an interesting trip. I think I'll write more about it and that burly colonel in part 4…

Part 2 of "QA, A Touchy Feely Experience"

A clear demarcation exists between the tasks I did in QA before and those after the 7 months I spent away in the 1st Gulf War. My first year as an inspector had been devoted to assessing standards and keeping the avionics technicians honest with plenty of inspections. (read part 1 for more on those experiences.) I had been the bogeyman, the maintenance cop, the guy to watch out for.

Once the war ended however, and I returned to my old home in the Quality Assurance shop, I was shocked at how much had changed. As far as many of the other inspectors were concerned—me included—a terrible wind had roared through Little Rock AFB and had swept away much of what HAD previously made maintenance so effective there.

Two transformations had taken place, both of which had a huge impact on me as a QA inspector.

First, there was no longer a wing DCM. The Deputy Commander for Maintenance, usually a full bird colonel, and usually a pilot but sometimes not, was the “maintenance king.” He “owned” all the planes in the wing and was responsible for their upkeep. We in QA were his “people,” his eyes and ears, and kept him informed on all the doings “out there,” on the flightline and in the shops.

The DCM “went away” under a new-fangled organizational concept called decentralized maintenance. Under that new “foolish” brainchild the planes were distributed out to 4 new Aircraft Generation Squadrons. Each squadron commander of those AGS’s then became responsible for HIS planes. So, there was no more DCM to control ALL the 80 or so C‑130s, and believe me, maintenance suffered horribly because of it--and I'll tell you why I think so as this continues.

The second sweeping change that "enveloped" the entire Air Force during my absence had an even bigger impact on us QA guys than even the onset of decentralization. It was called TQM, which stands for Total Quality Management.

When TQM was first explained to me I recoiled in horror that anyone would be silly enough to try to implement such an idiotic thing for aircraft maintainers. The basic concept of TQM, at least as far as it was interpreted for use on Air Force flightlines, was that quality inspectors were no longer required, and THAT was all I had to hear to know that some moron had finally become the boss of the United States Air Force!

The rationale for the demise of inspections (and inspectors) was simple—under the principles of “total quality,” ALL members of the wing were going to have a new “quality oriented” mindset—with proper training and indoctrination of course—and would no longer require any oversight, because magically it seems, they would take responsibility for always doing the right thing, for doing it absolutely correct and by the book.

So, in 1990 and 1991, during a phase-in time of just over 6 months, the Air Force had made two very major cultural and organizational changes, and from what I could see as an inspector, doing so was a huge error on several levels.

For one thing, a major misjudgment was that "they" hurriedly put into effect TWO incredibly earthshaking institutional revolutions at THE SAME TIME! Now, I understand that there are times when its best to just actuate quickly instead of gradually, but this was not one of those times. It was simply too much too fast.

In one crucial way the quick changes destroyed the very fabric of what makes a unit good at what it does--the level of experience available to it. By decentralizing, virtually overnight, they practically wiped out almost every bit of corporate knowledge among the specialist trades. Where there HAD been a shop all filled with people with THE SAME specialty credentials, now, these troops (and their experience and varying backgrounds) was spread out between four different squadrons.

The idea behind this "misguided" action was that these specialists were “under-utilized” and “spoiled” and so could now be “cross-utilized” for OTHER “more important” "general" tasks, such as towing, refueling, tire changing, and panel pulling. Those had all been jobs strictly done by APGs, or the general mechanics, most of which had the view that ALL specialists were lazy, while all the “real work” was done by the APGs. (By now you might be picking up on the undercurrent of resentment that many APGs had for specialists, especially for avionics specialists!)

Unfortunately, the APGs under the newly decentralized schema were now running the maintenance show and “the abuse,” I mean the "cross-utilization" of the specialists began in earnest. Specialist training suffered horribly; usually, there was no one supervising the young apprentices anymore, at least not anyone with much experience on their systems. Before, there has been a specialist shift leader, a specialist shop chief, and a branch chief, all of whom took particular care to make sure THEIR new people were trained, and trained well. Compared to that, the new system was nothing less than a training fiasco.

Before, when the specialists were centralized in shops, there were always on-call a large population of experienced men and women from which to call upon for the tougher system malfunctions. Suddenly, these people were scattered to the wind and were no longer available for advice, guidance and training.

Now, instead of a 3-level having the advantage of being exposed in training to several 5 and 7-levels, once assigned to an AGS they usually trained under a single 5-level who had also been trained similarly. After a year of that nonsense the damage was done. What the heck were "they" thinking!

And speaking of training, previous to the formation of AGS’s, there had been almost 80 aircraft upon which to train at LRAFB. With so many airplanes it had been relatively easy for a supervisor to find the infrequent jobs for apprentice technicians to train and learn on. Suddenly, not only were there fewer experienced trainers, now there were less than 20 aircraft to use for that training. The result is that a new troop might NEVER get a chance to see and learn many of the infrequently seen tasks and malfunctions. Now THAT wasn't very smart, was it?

All together, I can’t imagine anyone coming up with a more efficient way to destroy the abilities of what had been a very fine set of avionics experience. I can't speak for all the other specialists, like the electricians, and the hydraulic and engine troops, but for me, it was a sad thing to see, especially considering how amazing the specialists had just performed during the 1990-91 war.

This new situation—the dispersing of planes and specialists—really began to limit the abilities of the newly qualified troops. It sickened me to watch it because once the core set of veteran technicians began to either leave or get promoted off the flightline, their lost expertise was virtually impossible to regenerate.

Luckily for me, and luckily for the 314th TAW, the decision was made NOT to disband the QA shop and therefore my life in “quality” continued, albeit in a metamorphosed state. As it turned out, it was one of the best periods of my life in the Air Force. I’ll get into exactly why in part 3 of QA, A Touch Feely Experience.

QA, a touchy-feely experience--Part 1

Just a few months after sewing on master sergeant, or E-7, and thus becoming a “bigwig” senior NCO, at least in some people’s minds, I was recruited away from the shop to join the Quality Assurance Office. MSgt Gray, the man I would ultimately replace, was the fellow who recruited me. He had observed me one steamy Arkansas Monday morning out on the flight line as I supervised all the avionics airmen, about 25 people, for that week’s FOD walk.

What caught Sgt Gray’s attention was my constant haranguing of my troops to stop gabbing, to spread out, to get their hands out of their pockets, and to actually pick something UP for heaven’s sake!
Ever since I had first started picking it up during my time in the air wing of the Marine Corps, I had taken F.O.D. very seriously. Sgt Gray was apparently quite impressed with my devotion to the task at hand and he really liked my apparent “hardass” take-charge style, which ironically, was not really my style at all. He hadn’t realized it, but I was doing what I was doing mostly tongue-in-cheek. Knowing me, my guys knew better than to take me TOO seriously, but still understood that I had to at least try to make it look good, especially when they knew that I knew that people were watching them AND me. Does that make sense? (probably not!)

By the way, FOD stands for foreign object debris, the destroyer of super expensive aircraft engines. When sucked up into engine intakes, FOD can cause major bucks worth of damage to an engine's vital internals, mostly to the spinning fan blades and vanes.

QA was quite an experience, very different from my previous life as a maintainer, and richly rewarding. The first wonderful thing about it is that my first task was to do what I’ve always been pretty good at—reading. My second task was also to read, and finally, I was ordered to—you guessed it—to READ. For the first week or two I read page after page from a mandatory reading list that included dozens of every sort of Air Force technical publication, all applicable to the work of repairing and maintaining C-130 aircraft and its ancillary systems.

Right off the bat, from the other inspectors, I learned that no matter what their maintenance specialty, all Quality Assurance inspectors keep a pocket notebook filled with references to all of the most important maintenance publications, called Air Force Technical Orders, or in the vernacular, TOs. The reason is simple: upon taking on the mantle of QA, we were expected to become fonts of maintenance wisdom and to be able to instantly quote the sources of that wisdom.

Supposedly, we were the experts, the go-to-guys for every problem that came down the pike. Whether it was an aircraft fire or a run of bad components from supply, we were expected to investigate, gather data, report our findings, and recommend “fixes.”

Another primary assignment, albeit an unofficial one, was to be bogeymen. I hated that part of it and refused to act the part of a “gotcha monster,” or at least I refused to enjoy it, much! On the other hand, several of the others just plain old reveled in it. They’d pull up next to an airplane in one of our QA pickup trucks and satisfyingly watch the flurry of activity they caused. Sometimes it was exactly like when roaches scurry away when the lights come on. With distinctive caps perched high, aluminum clipboards clutched prominently, and with forbidding personas on full display, they would proceed to scare the hell out of as many airmen as possible.

A favorite ploy was to pull up in front of an airplane, a C-130E, usually filled and crawling with maintenance troops, and just sit there for a few minutes. In the meantime, people in the aircraft scrambled like crazy to make sure things were put right if they weren’t already, like having proper TOs at each work position, to double-check on safety devices and to make sure the aircraft forms were in good order. Then, after waiting a few minutes, the inspectors would pull away without ever intending to actually get out in the first place. It sounds like harassment, and it is, but some would reason that if that’s what it takes to get people to get squared away then so be it.

Sometimes, after coming back in from the flight line after a crueler than usual “attack,” I’d hear a couple of my fellow inspectors brag about some young airman that they had just reduced to tears. I guess it was my softhearted side, but hearing that kind of meanness always turned my stomach. The way they saw it though, they were putting the fear of God into those youngsters, making sure they understood the consequences and gravity of screwing up with lives and multi-million dollar weapons systems on the line. Even so, I didn’t like it.

I had a different style. I had no use for the concept of instilling fear into hearts and minds of “my people,” and that’s how I thought of them. I wanted them to “do right” because it was the right thing to do. I’d let the other inspectors act the “bad cop,” while I tried to play the “righteous cop.” Unless, that is, they gave me no choice.

In spite of going out of my way to downplay the scariness that my position as QA inspector caused, I realized quickly that it didn’t matter how nice I acted or how friendly my demeanor; my very presence was enough to send some young inexperienced airmen into fits of trembling mindlessness. This was more likely to happen when I did what we called an “over the shoulder” on one of them.

Each inspector had an extensive quota of various types of inspections that had to be completed each month. These inspections included checks of test equipment and their forms, proper upkeep of shop TOs, and our bread-and-butter—inspections of both completed maintenance, and maintenance as it was in-work, also called “over the shoulder” inspections.

The “over the shoulder” inspections were particularly nerve wracking for the inspectee, because he was literally a fish in a bowl. The inspector watches every action, from selection of the proper TO and test equipment, to the final sign off the aircraft forms, and every action in between, and all of it timed. To an inexperienced troop this process could cause unbearable anxiety.

I remember one poor fellow, an A1C, who as his “over the shoulder” progressed, became so nervous that he became unable to function. His hands trembled so hard that he could not even turn the pages of his checklist. I stopped him, telling him that I had just officially ended the inspection and to go ahead with the procedure just for practice. I think it was a simple operational check after one of the aircraft indicators had been removed and replaced.

As soon as I told him that I would just watch him go about the checkout as a freebie, he lost his shakes and sailed through it. As he finished the last step I clicked my stopwatch and congratulated him on a job done perfectly. I had decided that if he was able to complete it correctly to give it to him, and if not, I’d just tell his supervisor that the boy needed more work to build his confidence. After that, he was good to go and never had another problem with inspectors.

So that was my style, trying to put people at ease, to get a TRUE take on things. I figured if folks were trying to overcome nerves that I wasn’t getting a true gauge of their knowledge and abilities.

Not long after “learning the QA ropes,” another personal policy I soon implemented was to never surprise a branch chief with a “gotcha!” For instance, on occasion, a procedure would get amended in the checklists or TOs, and because I was always reading the publication changes I oftentimes found them ahead of the shops. I’d always be especially sure to make a note in my “inspector’s notebook” of any new aircraft “warnings,” “cautions,” and “notes.”

Sure enough, I’d be out on the flightline and find one of the guys going through a procedure without complying with one of the new steps I had discovered. If it involved safety then it was considered a “major write-up,” never a good thing for supervision to be nailed with. I’d correct the problem on the spot and make a beeline for the branch chief’s office. I would tell him, nicely of course, of my findings and that I wanted to ensure that it was corrected, or else I would have to elevate it as a major write-up.

I’d give him a week to fix it, to make sure that all his technicians knew of the amended procedure, to basically get that new knowledge incorporated into everyone’s brain banks. I’d follow-up after the week just to make sure. By comparison, some of my fellow inspectors might simply write it up without trying to fix the problem first with the shops. Again, I had a “kindler and gentler,” less adversarial style. I never wanted to make anyone look bad if I didn’t have to.

What I hated worse than anything though, is if I’d approach a shop chief or a branch chief with what I considered a “freebie,” only to have him cop an attitude and argue with me. I’d listen for a few minutes, smile, and wish him a nice day. First chance I got after that, if I’d catch someone not complying with what I had found and had tried to “share” with the chief, I made it a point to just wrote it up WITHOUT first conferring with him. You see? You TRY to be nice…!

Not long after I began my long tenure in Quality Assurance, I developed a reputation for two idiosyncrasies—one was for the supposedly peculiar way I inspected completed maintenance tasks, and the other, strangely enough, was my affability.

That my affability was not entirely appreciated surprised me somewhat. My goal was honorable—to put folks at ease—but I guess I was creeping some of them out with it. For most, getting inspected was grim business and to have a lighthearted inspector with a good-humored attitude just did not jive with that. Just the same, I continued with the “funny guy” bantering style I was comfortable with, although I could see where my detractors were coming from.

For instance, there were times, although not often, when some of the people I inspected, through no fault of my own, became my “victims;” or that’s how they saw themselves when I had to either outright fail them or rate them very low. When that happened, my smiling joking manner came off as jeering and snide, as an “unkind cut,” so to speak.

One of these poor fellows captured that outlook perfectly after a particularly brutal inspection when he told me after I briefed him on all his many errors, “PJ, you’re the ONLY inspector that tries to cheer people up WHILE you’re failing them. Can I be honest with you? You know, sometimes we don’t know whether to thank you or to knock those smiling teeth down your throat.” With that, I think he captured the sentiment perfectly.

Now, getting back to that first idiosyncrasy of mine—the peculiar way (some claimed) that I inspected completed work. The best way to describe it is by quoting the nickname that some of “my troops” saddled me with. They called me “Touchy Feely,” because I touched virtually everything I checked. But, there was a perfectly valid reason I did that and it came from one especially hard experience that I took strongly to heart.

Lucky me—it happened only a few weeks after I became a certified inspector. Over a week’s time, I guess you could call it “QA hell week,” the QA office itself came under the critical eyes of an even higher level of inspectors, an entire team of them in fact. It was an MSET, or maintenance standardization, evaluation and training assessment team. (Whooo! That’s a mouthful!) Basically, that’s where a group of highly experienced experts came in and assessed whether or not a wing’s QA was doing its job up to par. (I made it past tense, since I don’t think they even do MSETs anymore).

My turn in the barrel was nerve-wracking to say the least. The MSET evaluator decided that he would rate how I assessed one of our avionics troops removing and replacing a flightdeck control panel. I thought all was going well until the troop I was assessing came to the step where he was about to secure the panel in the bracket. The MSET guy stopped him, and using his flashlight, he looked down inside the center console at the electrical connections. He reached inside and called me over. He then pointed out that the panel’s pigtail was loose and out of its clamp, although to me, it had LOOKED to be quite secure. He didn’t fail me for that flub, but I felt useless just the same.

Anyway, from that, I learned my lesson and subsequently, my nickname as well. From then on, I ALWAYS touched, felt, probed, twisted, pulled, pushed, and just generally used my fingers as my second set of eyes. It was also a great way to discover FOD in dark places behind corners and components, and I found lots of other errant things with my touchy-feely fingers that I never would have otherwise discovered.

My time in QA was amazing. I loved being in a job where I could make a difference to an entire wing and not just with one airplane at a time. Plus, it was a vacation from “babysitting” airmen, which is what anyone in the shop does who runs a shift, or a shop, or a branch. Instead of the maintainers, in QA, my only worry was the maintenance itself.

As a matter of fact, I stayed away from supervising maintainers for much too long, and that was ultimately the reason I never made the final “chief master sergeant” enlisted rank.

In essence, I chose between making rank and doing what I loved most. I probably could have made it all the way up to the highest Air Force enlisted E-9 rank, but I opted instead to stay in "staff level" positions, namely Quality Assurance, Aircraft modifications, and aircraft systems testing.

Career wise, my 6 years in "Quality" was my "biggest mistake," but it was also the second best part of my career… my time in testing being the best by far. More on that later… In fact, go here for part 2 of my QA experiences!