One of the biggest challenges facing a cavalry squadron at NTC is demand of maintaining their equipment in a tactical environment. Units often provide maintenance support from their motor pool while training at home-station, lending themselves to brick and mortar infrastructure and easy access to their brigade supply support activity (SSA) and other SSAs on the same installation. These unrealistic work conditions create complacency in our ability to conduct maintenance in a tactical environment. Under this construct, units do not stress their equipment, develop analog systems of record, test the strength of their shop stock listing (SSL), practice their 5988-E flow, or fine-tune hasty maintenance meetings at Logistical Release Points (LRPs).
Challenges with System of Record at NTC
Observation
Soldiers lack expertise on the Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT). Clerks struggle setting-up and tearing-down the VSAT at NTC. When VSAT connectivity degrades at NTC, maintenance leaders are challenged to deadline equipment and requisition parts. Unit Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) do not outline a PACE plan for executing maintenance when the VSAT is not setup. Units are vulnerable to VSAT outages and slow to execute maintenance until a leader takes the initiative to solve the issue.
The Global Command Support System-Army (GCSS-A) is the system of record for executing maintenance in the Army. Still, a redundant analog system is also required to capture maintenance operations using the analog system outlined in appendix A, section II of AR 750-1, Army Material Maintenance Policy (AMMP). Maintenance control sections rarely have efficient analog trackers updated within their shop, informing all leaders within the section, and creating shared understanding of operations.
Best Practices
Automated logistics clerks need to understand the VSAT’s capabilities and develop trouble-shooting skills to expedite VSAT connectivity when the shop office displaces or VSAT maintenance issues arise. An SOP that captures tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) within maintenance control impacts success, and a TTP for ensuring VSAT connectivity is vital for maintenance control. Training clerks on the VSAT is as simple as tearing it down and setting it up semi-weekly at home station in the motor pool. Sections can also build on this by tearing down the VSAT and moving to a local training area and setting up the VSAT and shop office. Another TTP is networking with other maintenance control shops in the brigade. During VSAT outages, clerks can update the ESR at another GCSS-A workstation within the brigade streamlining coordination with adjacent maintenance control sections in the event of a VSAT outage.
Building a good relationship with the Sustainment Automation Support Management Office (SASMO) is critical in developing contingencies for VSAT outages. A TTP that units can establish is coordinating with SASMO to tear down and set up their brigade substitute VSAT. This builds cohesion between the maintenance and SASMO clerks, and it gives the maintenance clerks hands-on training on the substitute VSAT in case theirs develops a dead-lining fault.
Maintenance control needs redundant analog maintenance trackers within their sections. They must update analog trackers as the equipment status report (ESR) changes, so there is a Common Operating Picture (COP) within the shop. Additional trackers capturing on-hand packaged fuel (POL), recovery operations, high-demand parts out of Shop Stock Listing (SSL), and status of critical job-orders are essential for maximizing the shared understanding and efficiency amongst all leaders in the squadron and maintenance section.
Units must maintain analog redundancy using the DA Forms outlined in appendix A, section II of AMMP to ensure they can continue to execute maintenance in cases of extreme VSAT outages. DA Forms required to execute analog maintenance are: DA form 2407 for each work order, DA form 2405 as a registrar for all work-orders, DA form 5987 for dispatches, DA form 2404 for equipment inspections, DA form 2765 to walk-up parts at the SSA, DA form 2064 as a document registrar to track parts, and a DD form 314 to monitor non-mission capable (NMC time). These DA Forms allow the maintenance control section to continue executing maintenance in place of GCSS-A connectivity. It is imperative that the manual forms and processes are input into GCSS-A once it because accessible to ensure continuity and accuracy of data.
Shop Stock Listing (SSLs): Enabling Quick Forward Repair
Observation
GCSS-A automatically tracks the demand-history of parts issued against job-orders. Internal SSL reviews chaired by the maintenance control technician can capture unique needs that automatic demand-history audits will not achieve. For example, at the NTC, Stryker cavalry formations often have a high consumption of tires due to the harsh terrain they experience, but without an SSL review, Stryker units may not have increased their stockage levels for tires. Without appropriate SSL, maintenance control is forced to order the part, which requires GCSS-A inputs and picking up parts from the SSA, which in turn slows tempo and delays repair of combat power.
SSL is often maintained exclusively at the Maintenance Collection Point (MCP) rather than distributed across the maintenance footprint to include Field Maintenance Teams (FMTs) and contact teams. SSL that is out of reach of mechanics or does not meet the demands of unscheduled maintenance takes a toll on the operational readiness rate and puts a strain on pass-back maintenance process, limiting the ability to maintain at pace.
Best Practices
Maintenance control sections must conduct quarterly SSL inventories and internal SSL reviews where key maintenance leader personnel and senior mechanics review historical data on the ESR and identify routine faults. A good TTP for fleet management is reviewing the fleet by bumper number and fault, following field problems, and keeping a historical record over time. The historical ledger allows maintenance leaders to have data that they can review that gives them insight into their fleet.
Units also need to examine demands that an upcoming mission might have on their fleet so that they can forecast the potential parts their fleet might require based on the task and terrain. Once shop stock is vetted and filled, maintenance control must conduct a fleet analysis to identify the parts required by troops and provide the parts to them. This analysis allows field maintenance teams (FMTs) and contact teams to push forward in a tactical environment with their supported troops and have parts on-hand that can rapidly fix equipment forward.
Challenges with 5988-E Flow, Maintenance at LRPs, and Tactical Maintenance at NTC
Observation
Cavalry squadron SOPs articulate a 5988-E flow interval, which is neither mutually understood nor practiced. Many units ambitiously have a 24-48-hour flow requirement, but have inadequate systems in place to ensure they are receiving the 5988-Es back and that they are properly filled out. Key maintenance managers rarely attend LRPs. Thus, maintenance leaders miss an opportunity to discuss and resolve maintenance issues at an LRP meeting.
At the Forward Line of Troops (FLOT), troops often fail to conduct maintenance efficiently. Units fail to have an SOP that explains a standardized way of “when” and “how” to perform field maintenance. Units commonly fail to understand where field maintenance falls on the priorities of work, rehearse how to maintain security posture during maintenance activities, and have internal tracking mechanisms in place that utilize vital leaders of the troop and the FMT or contact team that is attached to the troop.
Best Practices
The SOP should express how to conduct field maintenance while maintaining security, refine where maintenance sits in the troop priorities of work, and list roles and responsibilities of FMT and contact team personnel as well as key leaders of the troop in how to manage maintenance. A good TTP is establishing a 5988-E flow that directly involves essential leaders. Normally, the key leaders who need to play an active role in the 5988-E flow are first line supervisors, platoon leadership, troop executive officers (XOs), troop first sergeants (1SGs), distribution platoon leadership, and the squadron maintenance officer (SMO).
Once the 5988-E flow is published in the squadron SOP, units need to practice that system routinely at home station to build continuity within the flow structure. Another TTP to ensure 5988-Es are protected and sorted by unit is producing two polyvinyl (PVC) pipes per troop. A new set of 5988-Es goes in one PVC pipe, and the completed set in another, and key POCs exchange the PVC pipes at the LRP. This TTP speeds up the LRP and protects the 5988-Es in the process.
POC: Maj. Jim Plutt, Cobra 03, Task Force S3 Trainer, james.m.plutt2.mil@mail.mil
–
You can access the entire Maintaining at Pace NTC Update in a PDF HERE – or click the link below for an archive of all Lessons from Atropia.
Complete archive of The Company Leader Posts