Would you like to hear about the untold success story on the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) - particularly from the Air Logistics Squadron, Sembawang Air Base (ALS SBAB)’s innovation and excellence journey?
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A Short Tale @ ALS SBAB
The ALS SBAB’s core business is to provide maintenance and engineering services to the RSAF’s helicopters. Our services include scheduled servicing, repairs, configuration role change and system upgrades to the aircraft.
Do you know who are our key customers? They are our helicopter pilots from both the local and overseas Squadrons. Our external customers are the Singapore citizens.
Our mission is to deliver world class logistics - skilled in maintenance, expert in engineering and safe in practice. We provide safe, reliable and mission capable aircraft for our pilots to train and execute their missions. Through our dedication and passion, the defence of Singapore will be uncompromised.
Innovation And Being Innovative - The Gift That Keeps Us Moving !
Would you know why innovation is a key impetus to us ? In the ever changing military aviation and engineering landscape, we know innovation is important to help optimise scarce resources for us to stay prudent, competitive and dynamic. Innovation steers us towards the vision of first class Squadron, world class logistics and enable us to be at the technology forefront. Being innovative also facilitates us to do the right things.
Stories Before We Ask Stupid Questions
It happens everywhere. With leaner manpower and budget, we also face the challenges to sustain and expand our core business. The happy news is that we managed to overcome them despite the challenges!
What we did to help us achieve a breakthrough lies with the proposed modular servicing concept. It managed to reduce the down time of an aircraft by as much as 96%. We also formulated the lean maintenance concept that reduced the servicing time of an aircraft by 40%!
In addition, we managed to sustain 24/7 operations whole year round with the modular servicing concept. By breaking up an aircraft servicing into modules, it facilitates our pilots to utilise the aircraft around the clock to achieve more missions. No heavenly formula. This concept has indeed delighted the pilots. It was also operationalised during the tsunami relief mission in December 2005!
To do more with less, we made innovative enhancements to the rotor blade balancing using the six-sigma methodology. This created cost savings of $180,000 each time the rotor blade is changed!
We enjoy the fruits after the labor. We aim to live and operate with style!
Evereyone loves celebration. The same goes to us! We recognise every achievement attained by our staff through the value based rewards system (VBRS). This is built upon our core values of operational readiness, safety, quality, productivity and innovation and people development. Outstanding staff were rewarded with bottles of wine, interesting visits to Malaysia and duck tours organised for the recipients and their families. Our Junior Officers and Warrant Officers are also empowered to reward deserving staff instantly without going through any approval chain. This novel idea warms the heart of our staff and strengthen the cohesiveness in ALS SBAB !
Want to dig deeper ? We can tell you more on the behind-the-scene stories!
Life During And After Ask Stupid Questions…
Inside story on our life and the BIG positive enjoyed ! Since March 2006, we embarked our new innovation and organization excellence journey using the National Library Board’s Ask Stupid Questions (ASQ)’s framework. Two workshops were held @ our Officer Mess and the National Library Board. About 80 staff – mainly specialists, supervisors and senior executives from the Squadron were involved.
After the ASQ workshops, our specialists and supervisors used the ASQ framework to generate multiple projects to improve our Squadron’s excellence journey on a monthly basis. Subsequently, these projects were driven by each value office, which will then bring the projects to home base. Through this process, the group of specialists are empowered to steer the Squadron towards organisation excellence. This provided each staff a sense of pride and achievement!
As part of our annual work plan, our senior management reviews the Squadron’s vision, mission and value (VMV) using the ASQ framework. It was incorporated as one of our formulation tool. The ASQ framework encourages ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking and innovative approach to facilitate us to formulate our new work plans and initiatives. Our objective is to ensure that ALS SBAB’s current VMV remain relevant to help set the direction towards our future goals.
ASQ indeed stretches us beyond!
The folks
Generated Uniqueness
An inside story. One of the unique solutions from the ASQ workshop that created a positive business change is the way our technicians read the aircraft technical manuals. Reading publication has always been considered as a boring and monotonous activity, yet important to many technicians as we work on the expensive machines. ASQ encourages us to link our technical manual to the attributes of comics enjoyment. We knew the need to have clear, attention seeking and fun publication. Hence the concept of “engaging reader in a meaningful way” through comics/graphics changes the way we view aircraft technical manuals. We would never have thought of this concept if not for the ASQ process and technique!
Connecting the attributes of being @ a spa to taking an individual physical proficiency test (IPPT) is another breakthrough solution created from the ASQ workshop. The mooted idea is now known as “ALS SBAB Country Club Programme”! Our staff is required to pass an annual IPPT, which gauges their physical fitness. Every year, there are many failures. This created the need to conduct remedial training. Well, remedial training is perceived as a ‘dis-incentive’ programme. This perception runs contrary to the spirit of having life long fitness. As an overcomer, we are currently working on a plan to encourage our staff to take up selected sports to improve their IPPT passing rate. The motivation behind us is to instil ownership spirit for our officers.
Our people in action
It’s All About New Innovative Actions
What are the ways to serve our customers/staff better ? Hmmm.. we have a portable 3-1 comms tester idea which achieved national accreditations. It was subsequently designed and prototyped by a team comprising the pilots, our customers and staff. No one else in the industry offers a similar product. Hence, this product innovation is considered as one of its kinds in the world. In fact, we are working with aircraft original manufacturer equipment (OEMs) to implement this idea for other operators in the world. In terms of operational readiness, this device has reduced the rectification time required by as much as 67%! This translates to an increase of 20% or more business growth for our customers!
The One Unique Thing
ALS SBAB operates as a matrix organisation. Our core values became the guiding framework for the Squadron’s continuing organisational excellence journey. Five value offices were set up to oversee efforts towards each core value. Everyone in the Squadron is “double-hating”. Each personnel hold a primary operational appointment as well as given the task to promote one or more of the values.
In our organisational excellence journey, we are fortunate to attain the Minister for Defence Award in 2005, MINDEF Excellence Award in 2005 and 2006, and the Distinguished Public Service Award in 2005. ALS SBAB is also the first RSAF unit to attain Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) certification.
Life @ Our Finger Tips
ALS-SBAB’s consistent performance reaffirms the unit’s success attributes. We called the attributes the “3Cs”. So, what are the “3Cs”?
The first “C” is “Total Commitment”. This is our investment in the future. Our Squadron sealed by ensuring total commitment towards organisational excellence.
Our second “C” is “Clarity of Purpose”. We ensure our unit values and mission are clearly communicated, understood and shared — by aligning the elements of organisational excellence to the unit values. This will establish one common set of formula to secure mission success. Understanding the intent and requirements also create the opportunity and capacity for our staff to add value while exploring for the best solutions.
Our third “C” is “Effective Communication”. We engage the hearts and minds of staff by effectively cascading information based on the policy of “One Knows All Knows”. This policy stems from the belief that the entire Squadron shares a common understanding of the situation to achieve the desired outcome. A notable example is its news-style television series titled “Channel ALS”, which was produced by our in-house talents. Besides “Channel ALS”, storytelling is also a sharing and learning initiative unique to us too. Our Warrant Officers and Officers take turns to share stories based on their experiences. The intent is to drive a message across such as safety. These stories are closer to their hearts, well received and convey the message with emotional impact and interest.
The Road To Customer Satisfaction Is Wide Open !
We Stay On Our BIG Dreams !
We are committed to achieving operational success as our desired outcome, We believe that cohesive teamwork is the key element to achieve operations safely and efficiently. Through teamwork, everyone is committed and motivated to stay on purpose while sharing the same vision together. The success and fruits of labour are henceforth satiable by everyone.
Partnering with our customers, we also aim to bring customers supportability to a higher stratum through knowing customers’ requirement proactively. The dynamic global climate has brought about new challenges to our customers. Being consciously aware of their requirements, we will be able to deliver new products and services on a timely basis to further delight them!
ALS SBAB’s quest for organisational excellence will be even more challenging with a leaner workforce. Through the strong culture of pride, passion and professionalism, we strive to continuously do more with less innovatively and achieve “cheaper, better and faster” results!
The senior management team