Hard work helps equipment laboratory improve processes

  • Published
  • By Kendahl Johnson
  • Kirtland Public Affairs
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  

Kirtland’s Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory, or PMEL, has made great strides over the past five years, going from a troubled lab to one that is seeing continued success.

According to Bob Eslinger, Test, Measurement, and Diagnostic Equipment flight chief, the Air Force was considering closing the lab following several failed inspections.

 “We were pretty widely known throughout the Air Force PMEL community as a laboratory with problems,” Eslinger said.

The PMEL, a 377th Maintenance Squadron unit, is part of the Air Force Metrology and Calibration program. The program’s mission is to ensure Air Force systems and equipment are accurate, uniform and reliable. Kirtland’s PMEL technicians calibrate and repair any piece of measurement equipment for agencies throughout the base, including the Air Force Research Laboratory and the 58th Special Operations Wing.

Eslinger said the problem with the laboratory wasn’t a matter of bad employees, it was a combination of not having the right resources and not getting the proper support from senior leaders.

Things started to turn around in 2011 when Gen. Donald Hoffman, former Air Force Materiel Command commander, came to Kirtland and made the lab his first visit.

“He wanted to see for himself just what was going on at Kirtland PMEL,” Eslinger said.

He said Hoffman saw the lab’s potential. He started by helping get three new military positions assigned to the lab.

“There were many advantages to this,” Eslinger said. “Not only does it bring us more people, but it brings us new people with fresh eyes and fresh ideas. They are people who are cycling in and out and could bring us knowledge of successful things being done at other PMELs. They also brought us a better perspective on training, and helped beef up our training programs.”

The additional workers, along with improving several internal processes, helped the laboratory see a complete turnaround. It passed the required certification inspection in 2012, and then again during the Unit Effectiveness Inspection in 2015. It was the first time since 1996 that the unit passed back-to-back major inspections.  The improved turnaround time on equipment from 60 to 70 days to about eight days.

“I’m very pleased with the changes,” Eslinger said. “We’ve worked hard, morale has improved and we’re almost where we want to be, although we want to keep improving.”

Kirtland PMEL has 28 employees and supports an inventory of more than 16,000 items. Accuracies are corrected to the 1,000th of an inch.

The equipment they support typically falls under two different categories. The first category involves electrical standards, which deals with voltage, current and resistance-type measurements or the wave-form generation and analysis section.  The second category deals with the physical dimension sciences, including pressure, torque, tension, weight, optics and temperature.