RSO provides path to scale innovation

  • Published
  • By Daryl Mayer, AFLCMC Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio (AFLCMC) – The Rapid Sustainment Office was established just 4 years ago with the charge to create a pathway for innovative ideas to impact the sustainment enterprise and dramatically improve Air Force readiness.      
 
When Rodney Stevens came on board as Deputy Program Executive Officer some 6 months ago, he found an organization just hitting its stride. 
 
“We’ve taken this technology management pipeline and organized a Life Cycle Management Center organization around it that allows us to identify the best of breed technologies, to be responsive to customer needs, to continue product delivery and to avoid the proverbial “Valley of Death,” Stevens said. 
 

The RSO focuses on six technology areas: Advanced Manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Augmented and Virtual Reality, Data and Digital Environments, Automation and Robotics and Rapid and Austere Maintenance Environments.  Teams in each of these areas look to the other services, industry and academia to leverage mature, new, emerging and disruptive technologies to improve readiness.
 
“There are a lot of players going after innovation and that’s a good thing.  We want the Airmen of our Air Force to be innovators and to identify opportunities for innovation.  We want our small businesses, academia and other services to identify ways to get after the problems we’re facing on a day-to-day basis,” Stevens said.          
 
The challenge, he added, is keeping everyone moving to the same objective.
 
“Just having those necessary touch points [between organizations] and then going through with horsepower to ensure we’re all aligned and trying to achieve the end state.  That is to provide technology for the maintainer so that we can get after the mission readiness challenges that we're faced with,” Stevens said. 
 
To hear the full conversation, you can watch Leadership Log on YouTube at https://youtu.be/vkqeIa4KAZE.  You can also listen by searching “Leadership Log” on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Overcast, Radio Public or Breaker.