Air Force senior logistics leaders will soon focus on “fully implementing” Repair Network Integration (RNI), or the service’s way of bringing together the entire repair network of defense systems, according to a senior official.
Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Installations and Mission Support Lt. Gen. Judith Fedder told an audience yesterday at an Air Force Association breakfast in Arlington, Va., that RNI is part of a larger effort of improving logistics in the service. An Air Force fact sheet describes RNI’s two primary objectives as: Developing a single integrated repair network producing standardized work and enhancing mission generation manpower through a more efficient repair network.
By transforming current logistics repair processes into an integrated, centrally-managed service-wide repair network, RNI will optimize resources across the enterprise by minimizing duplication of effort and standardizing processes, according to the fact sheet.
Fedder said RNI allows a repair network manager to develop and apply a big picture approach to logistics maintenance.
“RNI is a way we can identify a repair network manager for a commodity who has insight into the repair capability across that entire network and can help manage the network,” Fedder said. “Let me bring that all together and make sure we are making the smartest decisions possible of that repair network.”
Fedder gave an example of a General Electric’s [GE] F110 engine. She said Pacific Air Forces logisticians used RNI tenants and concepts before moving F110 engine support off the Korean peninsula and consolidating it at Misawa AFB, Japan. Fedder said the move saved the service $9 million in efficiency savings over the Future Years Defense Program.
She also said RNI concepts allowed her repair network manager, when the 2011 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, to quickly shift F110 work over to other F110 bases until the service could get Misawa AFB back up and running.
“It proved, not only its efficiency, but its effectiveness,” Fedder said.