Assessment of the Air Force's Planning for the Technology Repair Center Concept

Projected dollar and manpower reductions in the depot maintenance area have prompted the Air Force to study possible ways of reducing costs without decreasing support capability. The Air Force decided that the best means to reduce maintenance costs while insuring high usage of depot maintenance facilities and capabilities was to redistribute the depot-level maintenance workload by technology rather than by a weapons system. This redistribution, which concentrates the workload into a single repair facility when items require similar skills, equipment, and facilities in the repair process, is called the technology repair center concept.

The Air Force recognized the need for operational change and developed the proper mechanics for planning it. However, the benefit-cost projections used to justify the technology repair center concept may be questionable because: (1) the depot maintenance cost accounting system could not provide adequate data on Air Logistics Center maintenance operations; (2) the audit trail was insufficient to verify some benefits; and (3) the tracking mechanism used could not isolate benefits and costs attributable to the technology repair center concept from other ongoing projects. Due to these limitations, a precise evaluation of the claimed benefits and costs was impracticable.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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