Great ideas can bring monetary rewards through IDEA program Published May 16, 2014 ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. -- Earning some extra cash could be as easy as coming up with a great idea - just ask Charles Dagley and Kevin Reid. The two Team Robins members were recently awarded $5,000 each for their idea to use the removed pylons from C-5Bs undergoing Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program modifications at Lockheed-Martin in Marrietta. The change saved the Air Force more than $9.5 million and many hours of repair cycle time. The award was made possible through the Air Force Innovative Development through Employee Awareness program, which provides an avenue to recognize employees whose creative thinking and innovative approaches to problem solving benefit Team Robins and the Air Force. According to the IDEA office submission, the previous PDM process for repairing C-5B pylons was quite costly and time consuming. There are four pylons installed on a C-5B Galaxy Aircraft - two inboard and two outboard. All four are removed during scheduled programmed depot maintenance every eight years at Robins. After eight years of flying time, the pylons need extensive repair, requiring a colossal amount of employee man hours and an enormous list of parts to be replaced causing long production lead times - a 198-day repair cycle. On top of those two issues, yet another constraint exists - many of the replaceable parts are no longer available because they are obsolete. The average cost for one inboard pylon to go through the previous repair process was $345,454 while the average outboard pylon repair cost was $328,937. Chuck Dagley, a 409th Supply Chain Management Squadron C-5 Flight equipment specialist, and Kevin Reid, an Air Force Life Cycle Management Center C-5 Division structural engineer, collaborated to further develop their idea that maybe there was a better way to get pylons back into service. The Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program modification includes replacing the current engines and pylons with a new design. The conversion of C-5B aircraft to C-5Ms is scheduled for completion in 2017, but until then, the unmodified C-5B fleet still must be supported. Candidates for their idea were the C-5B aircraft which had cycled through PDM within the past two years, so only a low number of flying hours had accumulated since the last overhaul. During RERP, pylons are removed and shipped to Robins. Because of the low flying hours, only minor inspection and replacement of some low-cost items were needed to return the pylons to service. Dagley and Reid's idea resulted in pylons being placed back into the supply system at 25 percent of the previous overhaul cost and in only 14 days.