An official website of the United States government
A .mil website belongs to an official U.S. Department of Defense organization in the United States.
A lock (lock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .mil website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Article Display

305th MXS PMEL assumes additional responsibilities

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Sean M. Crowe
  • Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Public Affairs
JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. --  In an Air Force with a continually shrinking budget, the 305th Maintenance Squadron Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory is following suit with an initiative in which the unit will acquire an additional workload to consolidate resources within the Air Force PMEL network.

Reallocation of resources within the career field provides an outlet for PMELs to operate and successfully complete their missions in a more efficient manner, thus saving time and money in the face of ongoing fiscal restraints in the Air Force.

PMEL is essentially the one-stop shop for calibrating test, measurement and diagnostic equipment used in the Air Force to measure various numbers and parameters. The service members who work in the 305th MXS PMEL, also known as metrologists, calibrate aircraft support equipment, medical equipment, tools, ordinance test equipment and almost any other gauging instrument in need of calibration for four service branches in the Northeast Coast of the U.S.

Major Command functional managers, or career field leaders, planned a Repair Network Integration initiative for the PMEL network, which shifts workloads from some smaller PMELs to shops with more capacity, including the 305th MXS PMEL, to consolidate resources and money to contribute to the Air Force's cost-conscious environment.

Dover Air Force Base's PMEL shop was a prime location to reallocate resources from due to the shop's overhead and workload ratio, so the equipment they previously supported will now be assumed by the 305th MXS PMEL by Oct. 1, 2014.

"Essentially, we will be taking on some additional workloads to close down another shop to make our career field more efficient," said Master Sgt. Thomas McKrush, 305th MXS PMEL Quality Assurance section chief. "We will have some challenges ahead of us, but we have taken measures to bridge the gap."

Coordinating support for new customers and operating at maximum efficiency with the manpower they will have available are just some of the challenges that lie ahead for the shop.

"We have planned an AFSO21 (Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century) rapid-improvement event to pinpoint what areas we can hone to make our unit more efficient," said Senior Master Sgt. Gregory Johnson, PMEL flight chief. "Ideally, we would like to keep the work schedules the way they are, but we can modify our shifts if necessary to accomplish our mission. We have a set number of calibrations that we are expected to process and we will make sure it gets done to accomplish the multitude of missions we support."

The shop provides support to many operational wings with aircraft missions.
The 305th MXS PMEL currently supports 14 wings and wing-level organizations and will increase to 17 upon assumption of Dover AFB's customers totaling approximately 500 work centers in the 305th MXS PMEL's purview. The 31 percent workload increase and the 9 percent manning increase will allow them to calibrate approximately 14,000 pieces of equipment annually.

"The scope of our job is enormous," said Tech. Sgt. Nathan Cyr, 305th MXS PMEL section chief. "Even people who we don't directly service will most likely be impacted by our work in some way. We may calibrate the tools you use on a jet, the tester used to verify your gas mask or the instruments used to adjust a pilot's night-vision goggles. So in a way, this change has the potential to affect an immense amount of people and missions."

The vast workload increase will eventually set the 305th MXS PMEL shop, which is already the largest PMEL in AMC, as one of the largest active-duty PMEL in the Air Force. The missions drive the PMEL shop to move forward as the pioneer in the Air Force PMEL network.

"Nobody else has done this yet," said Johnson. "It's an unconquered challenge, but we are putting our best effort forth to succeed."

Leaders in the shop have already begun planning ahead to ensure mission success.
The 305th MXS PMEL shop has already helped plan for a tentative collection point at Dover AFB for the new customers to facilitate transportation for equipment needing calibration. The shop has also begun site visits to customers to coordinate the most efficient support possible.

The more focused and organized the 305th MXS PMEL is, the more able they are to focus on the important calibrations that keep aircraft in the air and everything that supports those aircraft.