Post Tagged with: "86th Maintenance Group"

Some say that running is a hobby. For others, it’s a passion. For a good portion of people, it’s simply a means to an end — passing their physical training test.

The Air Force functions like a complex machine made up of interlocking gears that keep the mission rolling. Every wheel is important with its specific function, but when one gear malfunctions, the whole mechanism suffers. The 86th Maintenance Group is an element of Ramstein that keeps the mission pushing forward.

I’ve been to Toyota, Caterpillar, John Deere, Standard Aero, Wal-Mart and many other industries to study their streamlined processes, also known as their lean manufacturing processes, but the one factory I’d love to see as the pinnacle of lean operations is Santa’s workshop in the North Pole.

As I entered technical training in 2005, the first words I heard were, stay fit-to-fight. Listening to our instructor gather opinions and discussing how the physical fitness examination changed from what we experienced through our different commissioning source was definitely a conversation point.

On Wednesday, it was 4,384 days since the terror attacks of 9/11 in New York, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa. It has also been 365 days since the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. In both cases, our national response involved using military action.