Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Kimberly Hill | Staff Sgt. Benjamin A. Burton, the Standard Army Maintenance System (SAMS) coordinator...... read more read more
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CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait - Burton, the Standard Army Maintenance system (SAMS) coordinator for the for the Army Watercraft Company, 371st Sustainment Brigade was handed the challenge of setting up a consistent and efficient way to install and use the stationary SAMS on the mobile Army watercraft vessels in July of 2013, just one month into his current deployment.
“The boats were basically invisible to us, we had no way of tracking them and every time one broke down it would place strain on the other vessels since the turnaround times for maintenance were so slow,” said Staff Sgt. Benjamin A. Burton.
“It really affected mission readiness, which is unacceptable since the watercraft vessels play such a huge role in hauling equipment and supplies all over theater and aiding in the drawdown of Afghanistan,” he explained.
Burton, the Standard Army Maintenance system (SAMS) coordinator for the for the Army Watercraft Company, 371st Sustainment Brigade was handed the challenge of setting up a consistent and efficient way to install and use the stationary SAMS on the mobile Army watercraft vessels in July of 2013, just one month into his current deployment.
The Quincy, Ky. native who has served in the Army National Guard in landlocked Ohio his whole career, was surprised when he was tasked with using the SAMS for Army watercraft vessels, a piece of equipment he has never encountered.
“The challenge with the vessels are that they aren’t just a piece of equipment, they’re a whole unit,” said Burton. “I’ve been in the Army for 13 years and I didn’t even know we had boats.”
Armed with his knowledge of SAMS and his civilian experience as a production control manager at an Field Maintenance Shop for the Ohio National Guard in Piketon, Ohio, Burton worked long hours while deployed to Camp Arifjan to create a solution that would solve the maintenance issues of the Army Watercraft Company.
“It was a painstaking process, I knew it could be done, I just didn’t know how it could be done. I spent a lot of time in the lab,” he said.
“The problem has been in the past, for multiple years in theater, how do you track maintenance on a boat because a boat’s mobile and SAMS is fixed to a spot,” said Burton.
Maintenance is an integral part in the mission readiness of the Army and is usually a streamlined process.
“SAMS is the Army’s fleet management tool,” said Sgt 1st Class Joel A. Capell, a Williard, Ohio native and a SAMS operator in support operations with the 371st Sustainment Brigade, an Ohio National Guard unit based out of Springfield, Ohio.
Deficiencies are entered into a computer using the SAMS, which records the information, sends it to higher headquarters, records the fault in the vehicle’s maintenance history and orders the replacement part.
As simple as this task may seem, here at Kuwait Naval Base, Kuwait, the use of SAMS hasn’t been applied to an extremely important yet often forgotten piece of Army equipment: Army watercraft.
SAMS, an efficient and integral piece of Army maintenance for land equipment, was not previously used in a consistent manner to track maintenance and order equipment in theater for more mobile pieces of equipment, like watercraft vessels.
The Army Watercraft Company, 371st SB is currently deployed to Kuwait Naval Base and their vessels are often at sea without unclassified network access and no way to send the information back to base or correctly use the SAMS installed on the boat, which until recently sat in the corner collecting dust.
As a result, maintenance was often a slow process and leadership was in the dark about the maintenance issues or problems that the boats were experiencing.
“The question was posed, ‘how can we track maintenance and their logistic needs in this theater?’” said Burton.
Burton devised a system with a standard fixed very small aperture satellite system and SAMS computer. They act as a conduit at the vessel support office (VSO). While at sea, the crew can send an image of their SAMS computer with the defaults listed in the system as an encrypted file. The encrypted file is received by a coordinator manning a SAMS computer at the VSO who then enters the data for parts and maintenance. An image of the computer after the data is entered is then sent back to the vessel, he explained.
This allows deficiencies and maintenance issues to be recorded immediately, no matter where the vessel is in the world, said Burton.
“I can in one system find a fault, analyze it, figure out what we need, how long it will take to fix, it, order the parts and track where the parts are,” Staff Sgt. Dallas J. Hill, a boatswain with the Five Forks (LCU 2018) of the Army Watercraft Company and a Tampa, Fla. native.
“They’ve been having a lot of logistical issues with the fact that they can’t get parts, their parts come in slow or they have really long lead times because they haven’t been generating their demands in SAMS,” he said
It’s also helping the watercraft company’s visibility, since the SAMS updates higher headquarters when a demand is generated, said Capell.
“We’ve brought visibility to the higher echelon so whenever they hit snags we can give them the support they need,” said Burton.
With the implementation of SAMS the Army Watercraft Company, based out of Fort Eustis, Va., is already beginning to see faster turnaround times for needed parts and maintenance.
“It’s really streamlined our process and made us much more efficient,” said Hill.
| Date Taken: | 09.26.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 09.27.2013 07:25 |
| Story ID: | 114366 |
| Location: | CAMP ARIFJAN, KW |
| Hometown: | QUINCY, KENTUCKY, US |
| Web Views: | 445 |
| Downloads: | 4 |
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