Logistical Effectiveness of Two-Level Maintenance

The Secretary of Defense tasked the Air Force to reduce its mobility footprint in support of contingency operations. Reduced budgets, force structure, equipment, and infrastructure forced the Air Force to reevaluate its logistical structure. Specifically, the logistics community had to find a better way to move thousands of personnel and equipment to support our expeditionary aerospace forces. The result of these efforts was a new concept in logistical support. Lean Logistics and its principal concept, Two-Level Maintenance (TLM), sought to shrink the mobility footprint by drastically reducing base intermediate-level repair and establishing a leaner two-level repair process. TLM promised to reduce the logistical infrastructure, produce significant savings and manpower costs, and increase survivability during contingency operations. A closer analysis of TLM shows that it did not achieve the full measure of the intended benefits. The projected net savings for implementing TLM did not materialize because of unexpected cost overruns.