When I took the guidon of a company in an Armor Brigade Combat Team (ABCT), having only served in light units, my first battalion maintenance meeting was a culture shock. When the Battalion Maintenance Officer (BMO) handed out copies of our Equipment Status Report (ESR), I thought it looked like a book of hieroglyphics. After taking a few seconds to look it over, I scrambled to identify which tanks were mine and what faults existed. I was up at bat and I had to brief what actions I planned to take to fix my maintenance faults. My ESR was 26 pages long. I had no answers and stumbled through the brief with the help of my Executive Officer (XO). As I listened to the rest of the brief, it felt as though the ESR could only earn unwanted negative attention. After a few nights of review and reflection, my outlook on the ESR was decidedly different. I realized we shouldn’t dread the ESR. In fact, it was the key to getting the parts and support my company needed to get in the fight.
Reframe the Problem
Situations like this are common for new company commanders. We can get consumed with the size of the report and become concerned with the poor impression it can give of our maintenance program. It can consume all efforts and distract from the task of getting platforms back into the fight. This train of thought can result in a slew of redundant meetings, late nights, and long weekends hanging priority parts. It becomes easy for soldiers to become laser focused on fault clearing while neglecting the broader readiness of their platforms. That kind of environment can decrease morale and give soldiers the impression that all they do is maintenance for maintenance’s sake.
With a deployment rapidly approaching, the magnifying glass hovered directly over our ESR and our company. The level of scrutiny placed on our maintenance caused us to change our perspective on the ESR. It became a tool we could leverage rather than a weapon we feared. Listed below are the steps our company took to fix our maintenance program prior to loading the trains and heading to port for deployment.
1. Accurate Reporting and a Clean ESR:
To get the support you’ll need to be successful you’ll need an ESR that accurately reflects non-deadline and deadline faults. Accuracy requires operators to conduct thorough preventative maintenance and check services (PMCS). Those faults need to be accurately and legibly annotated. We focused on leader involvement at all levels to ensure that resolved faults were removed and new faults were annotated. An accurate ESR with up-to-date information provides organizational leaders with a clear picture of where you need support.
Within our Company platoons evaluated their faults on the ESR weekly and confirmed if parts had been installed or maintenance had been conducted. Platoons highlighted their repaired faults and validated them with our maintenance team. Once faults were validated as actioned, the maintenance chief removed them from the ESR. The opportune time to conduct these checks was during motor pool Mondays. It’s a rigorous process but it will shed light on the true status of your vehicles.
2. Crack the GCSS-A Code:
If you don’t understand maintenance codes, you won’t know where your parts are in the supply chain. It’s no secret that your forward support company (FSC) is probably under strength, and they’re likely too busy to track down every single part you have on order. Our company reached out to our battalion maintenance technician and had him teach our XO, PLs, and CO how to read maintenance status codes. This allowed us to focus on hunting down the priority parts we needed. It also let the FSC prioritize our parts for pick up from the brigade. Our focus on ownership allowed us to take days off of our maintenance time and get tanks back in the fight.
Another great lesson we learned was to look outside of our brigade to sister brigades. This allowed us to find parts locally rather than wait for them to ship across the country. Another useful tip is to include the platoon sergeants in maintenance training. It allows them to take ownership over their vehicles and track down the parts their platoons need.
These are some of the most common terms soldier will see on an ESR. For further detail visits the digital GCSS-A End User Manual at https://www.gcss-army.army.mil/GCSS-ARMY/EUMLaunch/garmy_jump1.html
3. Empower your Team:
Empowering your leaders is the most important step in increasing your organization’s maintenance readiness. Company leadership has to manage more than just maintenance. To get the job done they need to empower the entire team. Commanders need to develop platoon leaders and platoon sergeants early to increase maintenance readiness, training, and lethality. Leaders need to understand the ESR and the parts flow from higher levels of support down to the FSC. If they can read the codes and track down the parts it builds confidence in the system and pride in their equipment. It also decreases the time a platform is out of the fight. Once you’ve given them the tools, commanders can take a step back and let soldiers conduct maintenance and build a culture of ownership.
Specifically, each “motor pool Monday” we picked one platoon to brief their ESR in detail. Platoon leaders and platoon sergeants briefed their faults, the parts ordered against those faults, and where they were located in the parts flow process. It was critical to me that they develop the skills they would need as future commanders and first sergeants.
To loosen a bolt holding a sensor, Spc. Danielle Smith braces her leg against a wheel to get some leverage. The Idaho Army National Guard’s Combined Services Maintenance Shop on Gowen Field provides maintenance for the guard’s operational needs throughout Idaho. Photo by Thomas Alvarez.
Conclusion
The ESR is a tool we should leverage not a weapon we should fear. Commanders need to build a maintenance system on the front end. That system needs to focus on accurate reporting, shared understanding, and empowered soldiers. These steps changed my perspective on the ESR and allowed our company to deploy confidently.
CPT Ben Potter is currently a company commander in the 1st Armored Division stationed at Fort Bliss, TX. He has served as a Platoon Leader in the 10th Mountain Division, an instructor at Tuskegee University, an analyst forward deployed and a Battalion S4. He commissioned out of the ROTC at Husson University in Bangor Maine.