A team of
management and Transport Workers Union Local 567 employees at the
American Airlines Alliance Maintenance Base, including the engine repair
facility TAESL, has set a “breakthrough goal” to obtain $400 million in
value creation for the airline by the end of 2008.About 120 union members and managers, led by David Campbell, Vice
President 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, “We
have 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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