Lesson 2/Learning Event 2
The inspection of overall maintenance management and the degree of material
readiness should include the areas listed in the preceding paragraph as well
as various repair parts requests and maintenance requests, with a follow-up
to supporting maintenance activities.
An inspection for its own sake may be worse than no inspection at all. Most
inspections are somewhat harassing, disrupt normal operations and schedules,
and generally result in extra policing efforts, "eyewash," and 'paper
maintenance' that add little to equipment readiness or productive
maintenance.
Therefore, commanders should establish and make known the
standards by which they will inspect or will have the command inspected.
They should ensure that these standards can be attained within the time,
resources, and support available to the unit and that the soldiers in the
command understand what is expected of them.
Each inspection must have a
purpose. The results must be critiqued with the responsible personnel and
followed up to provide assistance, if needed, so as to ensure that the
original inspection objective has been reached.
FREQUENCY OF INSPECTION
Periodic inspections or services are directed for specific items of
equipment by the applicable technical manual. The inspection intervals vary
by type of equipment, the level of maintenance by which the service is to be
performed, and the services to be accomplished.
These inspections are
scheduled and conducted by organizational or support maintenance personnel.
The Department of the Army does not prescribe the frequency for maintenance
management inspections. Generally, command and maintenance inspections will
be prescribed by directives from Army field commands or other intermediate
headquarters.
In determining their own requirements for inspections,
commanders should consider the degree to which these inspections meet
existing needs for the types of information they provide.
Duplication of
effort by conducting one inspection on the heels of another may then be
avoided both at the command level and at the inspected unit level.
Unsatisfactory phases of inspections should be followed up by a reinspection
within 2 to 6 weeks. The reinspection is not a duplication of effort in its
effect.
The inspection may be conducted by a command subordinate to the
headquarters which performed the initial inspection, but it
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