Technical order archives are leaned, digitized

Brandice J. O'Brien
72nd Air Base Wing Public Affairs

10/17/2013 - TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla.  -- The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Technical Systems Division Technical Orders Home Office has leaned its processes and in turn saved the Air Force $1,100 per technical order request.

"We're leaning out a paper-based technical order world to a digital-based TO world," said Blaser Munger, TO Home Office lead.

Technical orders in the archive and vault are organized into four missions -- unclassified archives, classified archives, classified TOs and the Army-owned joint munitions effectiveness manuals. Roughly a year-and-a-half ago, the Air Force Sustainment Center Engineering Directorate, which had previously headquartered the TO Home Office lost its funding to sustain the contract support operations. Something needed to change.

A team of approximately five civilians was put together to streamline the TOs and JMEMS and shut down the vault.

"This team did an amazing job to work quickly but smartly," said Marge Webb, Technical Orders Home Office section chief. "They had to do things properly and make sure the customer had exactly what they needed. Some of this data was up to 50 years old."

As the team worked the project, AFLCMC found funds to keep the operation going for another year.

With 180 million pages in all, it was a challenging task that presented unique obstacles including finding missing pages from TOs that were delivered to Tinker in 2000, when two logistics centers closed. Another challenge was ensuring the 406th Supply Chain Management Squadron had digital copies of its TOs. The squadron formed its own team and after several months of working with its senior leaders, it found a workable solution using an existing Robins Air Force Base, Ga., system and digital data at Tinker.

But, the team found ways to move into the digital age without scanning every single page.

"I also found five different studies from the past 12 years that had been done complete with charts, plans and cost analyses with $10-million estimates of how to digitize these archives," Webb said. "And all of these studies ended up in a file drawer. You can't get $10 million, our budgets are too tight."

Not only did the decision to digitize save the Air Force money, it also benefitted the customers. They were rarely asking for paper copies of archived TOs which drove up the cost since the office used contract support to maintain paper.

Last month, a customer asked for a time compliance tech order from the 1950s; if a TCTO is older than six years after it's rescinded, the office wouldn't have it. They only keep them for a short time, Webb said.

"We had begun to realize paper copy TOs had outlived their usefulness," said Pam Green, Technical Orders Home Office publication systems specialist.

But, office personnel will still fill paper orders for accident investigations, legal matters and emergency requests.