'Tool Room's Got It"

"Tool Room's Got It" A Cavalry Squadron Develops Its Tool Room As a Maintenance Indicator by Captain Tyler N. Shewmake and Mr. James L. Cassel The 3d Squadron, 2d ATB, was formed in September 1985, and immediately began organizing a squadron maintenance tool room. The unit personnel literally built the new tool room from the ground up, having no established standard operating procedures (SOP) and little written guidance. After a yearlong learning process, geared toward perfecting the tool room, we've developed both procedures and philosophies that go to the heart of the maintenance operation, and we believe others can benefit from our progress report. Our original goal was simple: to quickly and inexpensively develop a system to support more than 100 MOS 63- and 45-series mechanics who service a 180-vehicle cavalry squadron that employs more than 20 vehicle types. Although located at Fort Knox, the Home of Cavalry and Armor, the squadron was plagued by the same problems and frustrations encountered by any organization attempting to start up or improve its tool room operations. There were the usual shortages of space, personnel, materials, and time, all of which influenced operations to

Commonly used parts are mounted on plywood sheets, marked with the bin locations of each part (top photo). Mechanics can locate the parts they need -and the bin number - before going to the parts attendant’s window. Tee, prompang constant 30 the resulting product LcIlcLcp year’s worth of daily compromises and adjustments in our tool room operation. Although the tool room is but a small slice of our maintenance operation, it is the foundation of our service program. More often than not, our tool room accurately reflects the health of our overall maintenance. The centralization of the tool room systems with the maintenance indicators they provide, allows the unit leadership a quite valuable view of overall operations. The tool room accurately reflects the areas critical to effective maintenance. In the course of our normal tool room operations, we constantly revise, implement, review, and revise our operational procedures to address these critical areas. This article includes some of the operational procedures and inspection methods we found effective. Of course, this squadron has not achieved the optimum in tool room operation in only a year; that would be an absurd claim. But we have successfully assembled a tool room and a system - under less than optimum conditions - and we have a healthy start. May-June 1987 18

The Tool Room As Information Center It is possible - the way our, and most other maintenance operations, are configured - to determine the status of five or more critical maintenance operating systems without leaving the tool room. Making a one-hour, on-site review of your tool room operations can provide greater insights into your operations than just about anything else you can do in 60 short minutes. During a routine stop -when we spot-check test, measurement, and diagnostic equipment (TMDE), for example - we obviously can see the overall condition and calibration status of that equipment. But more importantly, we gain insight into what isn’t being done. It’s a pretty good bet, for example, that if the 600-foot-pound torque wrench or STE-ICE is unserviceable or not calibrated, it’s not being used. Good maintenance depends on following procedures and meeting tolerances. Field expedient repairs have no place in a scheduled service. Guesswork is expensive. Special tools - the category of tool that the Army expends limitless time and effort to field - enable your mechanic to accomplish specific maintenance operations on a specific vehicle. Without those special tools to accomplish an operation, it generally doesn’t get done. For each vehicle type assigned, we review the special tool listings in the corresponding -20 maintenance manual, and compare the list with the tool room’s on-hand quantities. At a glance then, we see that Bradley Fighting Vehicle fire suppression tests aren’t being done because the tool isn’t on-hand. Also check to see if the special tools and TMDE on hand are displayed and easily available. Odds are good that if they are cubby-holed, they aren’t being used. The frequency of using parts and tools usually determines how easily they can be issued: The tool room attendant will, by nature, keep the often-used tools handy. We can form a fairly accurate picture of the supply status of the operation on a weekly basis, in a very few minutes, by inspecting the items we stock and the due-in status of missing bench stock items. The questions asked are simple. Monitoring the condition of safety equipment gives the leader a good indication of how frequently it is used. Keeping the safety equipment readily available helps ensure that it will be used. May-June 1987

Are there empty bins? Does’the tool and spare parts attendant have stockage control cards or some system to ensure that the part’s national stock numbers are retained? Are there stockage levels for each part? Does the tool and repair parts attendant have document numbers to account for all zero balance items? Does he stock sufficient part lines for the number and types of vehicles we maintain? Are there metric items on-hand to repair those vehicles requiring them? (Deadlining an MlAl for a critical metric washer shouldnot be a common practice. How difficult is it to identify, locate, and issue a bench stock item? One way to find out is to grab a bolt off the shop floor - there are always a few on the floor under the parts washer - and ask the attendant for a nut to fit. Then observe. What process must the attendant complete prior to issuing the nut? Try to think of a simple process so that the customer can easily, accurately, and quickly identify the needed part by a cataloging system before involving the attendant. One way to do this is to mount all stocked QSS items on 2’ square sheets of 3/4” plywood, within reach of the mechanic, and cataloged by alphanumeric bin location. All the mechanic has to do is match the in-hand part to the desired part mounted on the board, and provide the attendant with the corresponding bin location. All the attendant has to do is locate the bin specified by the mechanic, and issue the part. The less time the attendant has to spend in the transaction, the better. Monitoring Shop Safety In looking at the status of safety items, your operation comes into even clearer focus, and it will be quickly obvious the extent to which your organization stresses safe operation. The presence, serviceability, and location of safety equipment, (or lack of same), graphically reveals how often it is used. By checking the tool issue log for a past issue of an item of equipment requiring protective gear, it is easy to see whether protective gear was issued with the item. Are there sufficient sets of hearing protection readily available to each person assigned? Are safety glasses issued to each soldier wearing glasses? Are face shields serviceable? Sharing Home-Grown Ideas A major building block toward effective maintenance, is the use of “home-growns,” the equipment and tools fabricated to meet local needs. This is not new, nor will an operation operate at maximum potential without them. In many instances, a tool may be locally fabricated at a post or civilian machine shop to meet a very real, yet local, need. Missions dictate needs. No two organizations have exactly the same mission or environment. Different mission executions require differing maintenance reactions and operations. We must encourage the use of this incredibly valuable, yet relatively untapped, resource. When a valid need is identified and a tool or device is unavailable through normal supply channels, it must be fabricated. Any device showing great promise to improve operations by shortening or simplifying a maintenance process should be sketched and submitted to an appropriate local fabrication operation. (P.S. Magazine is an excellent resource for ideas here.) Many costly organizational-level parts may be “revived” through the use of part-peculiar taps, dies, and the like. Conclusions In summary, the tool room is both an extremely important part, and a visibly accurate barometer, of motor pool operations. The degree to which “the tool room’s got it” depends on you, the maintainer. To the interested observer, the tool room is a wealth of ready information on the status of the unit’s maintenance operations, and can offer the maintainer a cornucopia of information. The 3d Squadron 2d ATB tool room is indeed the heart of our maintenance operation, and it is viewed as such. It has proven essential in assisting vehicle crews, and the organizational-level equipment maintainer. There are a finite number of hours in a day. An efficient, complete, and aggressively maintained tool room packs more productive time into each hour in that day. An hour spent looking for a tool, nut, or bolt, is an hour not spent repairing an equipment fault. When it seems the dike will burst, the tool room, in a very unassuming way, can be the Dutch boy.

CAPTAINTYLER N. SHEW-

MAKE wascommissioned in Armor at the University of South Florida in 1981. He attended the AOBC and the AOAC at Ft. Knox, KY, and served with 1 st Squadron, 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment. He is currently squadron maintenance officer with 3d Squadron, 2d Armor Training Brigade, Ft. Knox, KY. JAMES L. CASSEL served 2 0 years in various supply positions in the Army from 1962 to 1982. He was supply sergeant, A Co., 5th Cavalry, Vietnam, and served in West Germany monitoring REFORGER materiel flow and coordinating moralesupport logistics. He served in Korea as a supply sergeant with 55th Aviation Company and later was 1 SGT, 75th Support Battalion, Ft. Knox, KY. He now is assigned as tool and spare parts attendant, 3d Squadron, 2d ATB, Ft Knox. (As of 31 October 1986, 3d Sqdn, 2d ATB was redesignated 4th Squadron, 12th Cavalry.) 20