Week 5: Keeping Things Moving
Ava M -
Hello all, and welcome to week 5 of my senior project! This week was quite slow in the office. From Monday through Wednesday my days looked the same. I’d work alongside Mr. Mcdermott analyzing and implementing enterprise solutions and digital materiel management. At its core, enterprise solutions are about finding smarter, more efficient ways to manage large-scale operations across the Air Force. He emphasized how important the job is and that everything “we” do is meant to save time and reduce errors. Digital material management is all about how the Air Force tracks and allocates its physical assets; from aircraft parts to office chairs, using digital tools and data systems 1. Our focus was on analyzing current systems and identifying bottlenecks in the supply chain and funding distribution processes. Mr. McDermott and the lead financial analyst Mr. Saenz walked me through several issues like delays in inventory updates or duplicate data entries that can have ripple effects across the entire Department of the Air Force 2. We brainstormed ways to improve data flows, and I even got to help test a small section of an automation system being piloted. It wasn’t just computer work either. I got to attend a few brief meetings where program managers and technical leads were hashing out how best to balance cost, performance, and timeline. Being in the room (even virtually, sometimes) helped me see the weight of decisions being made daily. Mr Mcdermott was busy attending conferences for the chief of staff in the San Antonio region Thursday and Friday, so I was unable to work with him those days. Thursday and Friday were mainly focused on helping the team with sorting documents into folders naming and labeling files. I shadowed Mr. Saenz and sat in on a few of his calls to other departments on Lackland and realized how both mission support and operations sectors aren’t as polarized as I thought. Next week I plan on attending Major General Allen’s Program Management Review session virtually! It should be much more interesting! See you then.
Footnotes:
1 Unpublished information session, Mr Mcdermott, Ava Mallard 04/07 04/08 04/09
2 Unpublished information session, Mr Mcdermott, Ava Mallard 04/07 04/08 04/09
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