One good IDEA leads to a rich return

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Joel Mease
  • 7th Bomb Wing Public Affairs
DYESS AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  One lucky Dyess NCO just had a $10,000 check show up at his door, and it wasn't from Publisher's Clearing House ... it was for simply having a good idea.

Staff Sergeant David Berryman, 7th Maintenance Group Quality Assurance, was selected by the Air Force's Innovative Development through Employee Awareness program to receive the reward after saving the Air Force an estimated $172,000 a year. Dyess and Ellsworth Air Force Bases were both paying $17,965 every time a spring or actuator inside a B-1 landing gear control switch broke.

Sergeant Berryman described the actuator as a small plastic piece that looked easily replaceable.

However, as the sergeant would discover, the training orders called for the entire control switch to be replaced instead of the actuator or spring.

"The landing gear control switch was listed as an XB3 item, which means it calls for the entire part to be thrown away," Sergeant Berryman said. "So I was a little surprised when I looked up the cost of the item when I was ordering a new part."

This is what Sergeant Berryman said caught his attention and made him want to find a cheaper way to repair the item. With a little research, the sergeant discovered the actuator could be replaced for just a few hundred dollars.

Because this wasn't the first time Sergeant Berryman had submitted a cost-saving idea to the IDEA program, he said he was familiar with how to present the required documents to make the change.

"It took about three months of research," he said. "I did a lot of the work back at home, as I had to find the cost savings for both Dyess and Ellsworth."

His research led him to find that, between the two bases, maintainers would throw away approximately 10 landing gear control switches a year, just because one piece in the assembly was broken.

After his research, he was able to write a new training order to replace the actuator and save the assembly from being thrown away.

"It's a challenge," Sergeant Berryman explained. "But I like finding new and better ways of doing things."

As for the reward money, Sergeant Berryman said he put it to good use by purchasing a new home and remodeling it.