LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas –
Ever have a great idea that helped lots of people and went completely unappreciated?
With the Air Force's Innovative Development through Employee Awareness, or IDEA, program, many of your great ideas can be appreciated in the form of cold, hard cash.
"There are all sorts of ideas," said IDEA Program Manager Donna Leeth. "What people need to know is that anything, practically, is eligible for the IDEA program."
IDEA program cash awards can range from $200 to $10,000 and are being widely distributed around Lackland.
Anyone can submit an idea to the program, but only Air Force active-duty members, Air Force civilian employees and Air Force Academy cadets are eligible for cash awards.
"I wasn't even planning to put a suggestion in the IDEA program," said Engineering Technician Henry Hernandez. "I had been working to improve a specific process on one of my projects.
He noticed that there were approximately three hundred units of a part that had thread damage. Those parts were about to be condemned, therefore going to waste.
Instead of throwing them out, Mr. Hernandez came up with the idea of ordering a re-threading tool, which saved most of the 300 units. For this idea, he was awarded $200.
"The engineer was planning on putting me in for an award for our organization, but then we found out there was no award money available."
While this was fine with Mr. Hernandez, he said he remembered the IDEA program because he had put in a suggestion about 20 years ago, and he was an evaluator for the program in 2000.
"It seems like they were changing the program around that time to include submissions where the process had already been started. I had already ordered the tool, and it was nearing the expiration for the time I could still submit it for the program," he said.
Mr. Hernandez is, of course, not the only Lackland team member to profit from the IDEA program.
"There was one guy from here at Lackland out at Vandenberg [Air Force Base, Calif.], and he saw that the athletic field lights were on from dusk until dawn," said Ms. Leeth.
"He submitted his idea and asked if there could be a timer set on them because it was wasting electricity. It got approved, and now they leave the lights off in the morning and everyone has access to the switches so that people can turn them on and off as they need them."
In the current fiscal year alone, the Air Force has saved $298,032 through the IDEA program and distributed $10,087 to those who submitted ideas.
Ms. Leeth said that while saving the Air Force money is one goal of the IDEA program, that it is not the program's only goal.
"It's not necessarily just money we're trying to save," she said. "The program is about improving the quality of life in the Air Force."
Ideas, said Ms. Leeth, are booming.
"I've been with the program three years, and we've seen a steady growth," she said. "When I got here there were only about 40 ideas a year. This year, we've already had 106 or 107."