This month’s Unit Spotlight is Decentralized Maintenance Shop (DMS), a part of the 117th Logistics Readiness Squadron (LRS), 117th Maintenance Squadron (MXS) and 99th Logistics Readiness Squadron!
DMS, a part of Supply, allows maintenance and LRS to work together to get parts to the aircraft, repair serviceable parts within maintenance and turn in the parts for a credit that can assist in funding for the Wing. In simpler terms, it is supply integrated into maintenance.
“The DMS function is populated with members of the 99th LRS and Tech. Sgt. Gothard is the 117th Maintenance liaison between LRS and MXS. He tracks the items due in from maintenance, keeps up with who has what, where everything is, does all the leg work on tracking down parts and updating maintenance leadership on where items are at,” said Master Sgt. William Oslin, the 117th LRS Flight Service Center representative for DMS. “I handle the items due in from maintenance. I am responsible for making sure it gets turned in correctly and sent to the right place.”
“The requests go through like three filters. The maintainer talks to production to make sure they need the part or can get it. Then they send us the information and we verify it. Then we verify again with production to make sure that is what they want to do and order the part,” said Gothard. “Anytime Oslin gives them a part they owe him a part.”
Technical training for LRS is around six weeks at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland, Texas. Anyone who is part of Material Management is eligible to work in DMS, and within the Active-Duty side they are automatically slotted to work within DMS.
“For us, whatever base we get to, we are put into whatever position is usually open,” said Senior Airman Dawson Powers, part of the 99th DMS. “When it comes to the guard base here, DMS is the only slot that is available to us.”
There are currently two full time guard members and four active duty DMS troops.
“We turn in parts that are repairable, send it off to the repair shop and then we receive a credit for it because the Air Force is not spending the full price on another replacement part. They ship it out, it gets repaired and the serviceable part goes back into the system to save the Air Force money,” said Oslin. “It makes it a lot easier. It is one central location for maintenance to come order parts and pick up parts. Basically, we are the mini supply for maintenance. We are the go-to for them without having to go down to supply and bother them. By us being down here, it took a lot of the workload off of main supply.”