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The War on Terror caused workloads to increase 70 percent over three years at a U.S. Army Depot. The influx of new employees left an experience void and created discontinuity between job roles and actual processes. But a one-year training project got everyone marching in the same direction.
They call the Anniston Army Depot, in rural northeast Alabama, "The Tank Rebuild Center of the World," and the facility has more than earned its nickname. The Depot, established in 1942, occupies more than 25 square miles and employs more than 4,100 people (6,500 when tenant and contractor employees are included). Because it is the sole overseer of repair and maintenance for the U.S. Army's heavy- and light-tracked combat vehicles (except for the Bradley and MLRS) and their associated subassemblies and components, the Depot has seen its workload increase by more than 70 percent in the last three years.
"With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we've gone from a little over 3 million direct labor work hours in fiscal year 2003 to 7.2 million work hours projected for fiscal year 2006," says Gilda Knighton, Anniston's deputy director of mission plans and operations. That ramp-up has also required a ramp-up of personnel, she says: "Over the last four years, the Depot has been in an extreme hiring mode, bringing on 800 to 1,200 new hires."
All the hiring meant new training programs were …
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'Human existence must be a kind of error. It may be said of it: "It is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens."' - Arthur Schopenhauer |