Nagpur: Principal Maintenance Officers Committee (PMOC) meeting was held on 22 and 23 August 2016 at Headquarters Maintenance Command, Indian Air Force, Vayusena Nagar, Nagpur. During the Conference discussions were held on tri services Maintenance activities and way forward towards modernisation of Maintenance Infrastructure. Senior functionaries of Maintenance branch from Indian Army, Indian Navy and Indian Air Force attended the meeting.
The Conference was inaugurated by Air Marshal Pankaj Aneja, Vishisht Seva Medal, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Maintenance Command, Indian Air Force. Speaking on the occasion, he highlighted the role of maintaining effective Repair and Overhaul set up and an Effective Supply Chain Management for the operational commands and training requirements of the Indian Air Force. He brought out the need to intensity the interaction between tri services beyond the present format and platform that PMOC meeting provides. He urged all the participants towards adding value to the PMOC’s objective.
Chairman PMOC, Vice Admiral AV Subhedar PVSM AVSM VSM, Chief of Material, Indian Navy in his opening address stressed upon the essence of PMOC meeting and brought out that past meetings have immensely helped the three services to strive in unison. He brought out the need for increase in interaction to achieve common objectives. In addition he emphasised an the need to look into capital procurement of common systems for three services so that a common maintenance philosophy for long life cycle support plan can be put into place.
Air Commodore JJ Wani, Command Engineering Officer (Aircraft) of HQ Maintenance Command gave an insight on the role and functioning of Maintenance Command and Base Repair Depots / Equipment Depots in its area of responsibility.
Air Marshal PP Khandekar, Air officer in charge Maintenance of Indian Air Force spoke on common challenges and requirement of synergy amongst the engineering branches of the three services. He emphasized on the definite need for using the knowledge of PG qualified officers from all three services to help maintenance solutions. There is a need to look into life cycle management issues right from induction stage of ant system. He highlighted the Indian Air Force model on Engaging and Tagging which can be studied and emulated/adopted by the other services. He reiterated the need to formulate a common strategy to deal with OEMs/DPSUs to derive an effective response to all three services.
Major General MJS Syali, Additional Director General, EME (B) of Indian Army brought out significant examples of cooperation and jointmanship which have resulted in bonhomie within the three services.
The chairman in his closing address highlighted the take away from the meeting which resulted in addressing many common challenges, both in policy making and enhancing the effectiveness of sustained engineering support at all levels. He thanked all participants for meaningful and effective exchanging of ideas. He gave special appreciation for HQ Maintenance Command, Indian Air Force for befitting staging of the event.
After the meeting, the team visited Air India MRO facility at MIHAN. SS Quazi DGM of the facility conducted the team around the newly set up state of the art facility for MRO of wide bodied civil aircraft from customers like Air India and Jet Airways.
The team also visited Tata Automation Limited (TAL) factory at MIHAN which manufactures Advanced Composite Floor Beams for Boeing 787- Dreamlike aircraft. The facility was appreciated by one and all.
On 22 Aug 16, the team had visited Ordnance Factory, Ambhajhari. They were received by Mr Saurabh Kumar, Sr GM and Group Captain R P Singh, Director, Aeronautical Quality Assurance Wing (Air) and taken around to various manufacturing ordnance shops. Team was very happy to learn about various Industrial facility available and commendable job done by detachment of Air Armament Inspection Wing of Ambhajhari.
