FORT WORTH , Texas, May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- A team of management and Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 567 employees at the American Airlines Alliance Maintenance Base, including the engine repair facility TAESL, has set a "breakthrough goal" to obtain
About 120 union members and managers, led by David Campbell , VicePresident of AFW, and Gary Peterson , President of TWU Local 567, met for two days in an off-site meeting, dubbed the Visioning Conference, to set the goal, which is to create a partnership to empower all employees to make Alliance a world class maintenance facility.
The Alliance base employs about 2,000 people, including about 1,400 TWU aircraft and facility mechanics, crew chiefs, stock clerks and inspectors, and overhauls American's widebody fleets of Boeing 767s and Boeing 777s. TAESL, a joint venture between American Airlines and Rolls-Royce, is the North American overhaul facility for the RB211 and Trent engines.
"A breakthrough goal is critical to the future of AFW and to the people who work here," Campbell said. "Focusing on a breakthrough goal will challenge our thinking -- because it isn't possible using our current methods and practices. A breakthrough goal has the ability to disrupt our patterns and knock us out of the box. But, if we believe it is possible, that gives us the ability to reinvent the way we do our work."
Peterson said, "The opportunity for success at AFW is based on what we choose to do. We each have to take responsibility for developing solutions instead of dwelling on problems. We need to focus on our future and not our past."
To realize this goal, work teams were formed to focus on revenue generation and third-party work, leadership, cultural change and morale,productive increases through process improvements, accountability and employee involvement.
Pat Stewart, Vice President - TAESL, said, "We have proven that we collectively can accomplish what we set out to do. The Continuous Improvement process involves mechanics and others designing their own work space and developing the processes to do their work more efficiently. Those are proven concepts here at TAESL and elsewhere in the maintenance organization."
Pete Sirucek, Managing Director - Aircraft Maintenance, AFW, said, "Wehave a great work force here at Alliance and I am confident that we can achieve our breakthrough goal. We have gotten very positive feedback from other airlines that have sent us their aircraft to overhaul and repair."
Current base initiatives that will help AFW reach the breakthrough goal include the development of High Performance Teams, the Continuous Improvement program, the Aircraft Maintenance Futures Team that identifies ways to maximize facility and manpower capacity in order to bring in more third-party work, the Joint Leadership Team and the Joint Communications Team.
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