Air Force Sustainment Center Trimming Costs

The Air Force Sustainment Center “has documented improvements” of $786.7 million through savings and cost-avoidance measures in Fiscal 2013, AFSC Commander Lt. Gen. Bruce Litchfield told the Daily Report. According to a new white paper authored by Litchfield, AFSC accomplished this through an initiative that focuses on cost-effectiveness: the Road to a Billion & Beyond program. With R2B&B, “we’re trying to develop a cost-conscious culture,” he said in an April 4 interview. “We have two choices,” he wrote in the paper. Either “accept the costs and reduce capability, or change the way we do business.” Litchfield also came up with eight cost-effective guiding tenets for the Air Force to adopt, such as funding only to required readiness targets and not above and beyond, and finding opportunities to trade volume for velocity. If the service implements these tenets, one of the biggest challenges will be the “time it takes to transition” to them, he said. “What you have to have is constancy of purpose, constancy of effort,” in order to make the tenets become standard operating procedures, he said. Click here to continue to the full report.