Cramped, Tedious, and Safe

A focus on finding and training the right people for the work has helped AOG take a bite out of the fuel tank repair market.

If you wanted to set yourself apart in a rather small, very specialized market, what would you do? Well, if you were the brains behind AOG, Inc., you would begin by committing your company and employees to total customer service.

"Everyone in our company knows that ours is totally a service business," said Jim Pradetto, AOG’s vice president of marketing and sales. "It all really started with our owner. From the beginning he always said, ‘Guys, we’re only as good as our last airplane.’ That philosophy has stayed with us."

Since 1987, AOG’s "Tank Tigers" have spent more than 4 million labor-hours working on the fuel tanks of some 2,500 aircraft for 87 operators in 41 countries. You have to figure they’re doing something right.

A technique in helping maintain the quality and consistency of service is AOG’s use of a structured set of procedures and processes. "Every step of every job is clearly spelled out and strictly followed," Pradetto said.

This includes a master control form, on which a technician must list every item he is taking inside a fuel tank–even down to the number of rivets. When the technician completes the job, each item must be accounted for. "Working in those dark, confined spaces, it’s real easy to overlook a tool or rag," Pradetto said. The form is another check that the task has been completed, "and that includes cleaning up your mess."

Spending eight hours a day crawling around inside of an aircraft’s wing has inherent problems. "While technical skills and knowledge are important, they are really secondary to having the right attitude to perform well in this job," he said. AOG has developed a program "where we take ‘technically competent’ people with the desire and put them through our own training program," Pradetto said, "beginning with some real situational testing and simulation."

One of the more effective training tools AOG has developed is a practical-application "simulator." The company mounted a DC-8 wing section, including a pylon, on a stand. Prospective "Tank Tigers" go inside the wing to get a feel for the confined spaces of a fuel tank. Plexiglas panels let AOG trainers observe how a person reacts.

"Are they getting nervous? Are they trying to rush a job to get back out?" Pradetto said. "With this system, we really get an idea how a person is going to work out when he or she is in the tank. It’s not a job environment for everyone."

Pradetto said AOG does annual recurrent training for every member of its team, which is overseen by a quality assurance training manager on staff. "He travels to all of our satellite locations to make sure that everyone’s current on the latest products and company procedures and to conduct refresher confined space training," he said.

AOG takes a proactive approach to keeping up with customer needs and problems. "We keep close contact with customers to know when an airplane is coming in for heavy maintenance," Pradetto said. "We’ve put together reliability programs on a number of aircraft. We study each one prior to and then at fixed intervals after tank maintenance. We have a team at corporate that studies the data then sends it off to the customer and into the field."

AOG also conducts quarterly review meetings with major customers. "We’re here to offer advice and information," he added. "Even if it means telling the customer not to do a repair at that time."

Contact:
AOG, Inc.
2742 Burbank St.
Dallas, Texas
Phone: 800-635-9535
214-350-5334
www.tanktigers.com