HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah – As the Department of the Army continues its efforts to integrate artificial intelligence into daily operations, the U.S. Army Medical Logistics Command’s Medical Maintenance Directorate (M3D) continues to take proactive steps to prepare its workforce for the digital future.
A training event held April 28-29 at AMLC’s Medical Maintenance Operations Division in Utah, known as MMOD-UT, focused leaders and key quality control staff on leveraging the power of AI to streamline and improve ISO 9001 audit and quality control processes.
Attendees included representatives from all three of M3D’s medical maintenance teams in California, Pennsylvania, and Utah, as well as representatives from Sierra California Army Depot’s Medical Maintenance Readiness Program.
Organizations that have maintained ISO certification since the early 2000s have a culture of continuous improvement. The introduction of AI tools represents the next logical step in providing optimal support to the enterprise and ultimately the warfighter.
“This is a new industrial revolution. It’s not going anywhere,” said M3D director Jorge Magana. “We need to understand how to leverage AI in our fields. AI is in all our lanes now.”
Build a “persona” and set guardrails
Led by industry experts in quality management systems, the two-day event focused on how prompt engineering works, and in particular how to give AI appropriate constraints or “guardrails” to prevent it from going off-topic or “hallucinating” incorrect information.
“You’re inventing an assistant that really knows them,” the trainer told participants, warning that large language models are “built to please” and can get unwieldy without the right structure. “Vague instructions produce vague results.”
Through 10 hands-on exercises, groups practiced creating prompts using persona blocks, task blocks, and strict operational constraints. They learned that investing time on the front end of a prompt greatly reduces the amount of editing required on the back end.
For many participants, the training was an eye-opening experience that demystified complex technology.
“This was great,” said John Jeske, MMOD-UT inventory manager. “This training taught me things I really didn’t know about AI.”
Hanna Tarazona, production manager at MMOD-CA, thought the best way to explain AI was to relate it to parenting a 9-year-old.
“I think of AI as my child; it is a fascinating process of continuous growth,” says Tarazona. “It’s basically building it, guiding its behavior, and carefully putting guardrails in place to make sure it’s on the right path to getting the product you want. AI is a really great tool.”
Enhancement of audit process
ISO 9001 is a voluntary standard for quality management systems that requires organizations to consistently meet the needs of their customers and stakeholders.
Christine Ruiz, MMOD-UT Quality Manager, summarizes: “It’s all about ‘say what you do, do it, prove it, and improve it.'”
Lewis, a former biomedical equipment expert, admits that he and others are “outdated” when it comes to cutting-edge technology, but said he was initially cautious about AI. But this training demonstrated how technology can make her job much more efficient.
“Who would have thought that I could make an AI do something or give it rules like I do with my kids? So I don’t spend as much time on the back end of the product,” Lewis said. “It’s just, why didn’t I think of that? That’s kind of crazy.”
Lewis said AI can serve as a valuable tool for gaining new perspectives, helping auditors “see the forest through the trees.” For example, measuring customer satisfaction is a key requirement of ISO, but can be difficult for M3D as it is often the Army’s sole source of information for medical maintenance. Standard surveys do not always yield reliable data.
Ruiz said AI can be used to analyze data beyond traditional surveys and find new ways to define customer satisfaction metrics, such as analyzing the frequency of direct customer feedback or equipment return rates.
“It gave us a different idea of how to measure customer satisfaction,” she explains, adding that AI-generated audits are deeper and more thorough than manual reporting alone.
Continuous improvements for fighters
Continuous improvement is at the heart of integrating AI into M3D’s quality management system. This aligns directly with the broader readiness goals of AMLC, the Army’s Class VIII Medical Materiel Command, and its superior command, the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command.
By improving internal processes, identifying gaps faster, and producing more detailed and actionable audit reports, M3D is working to ensure the medical equipment it maintains returns to the field in top condition for the benefit of operational forces.
Through hands-on training and a willingness to adapt, AMLC and its medical maintenance personnel strive to remain on the front lines of medical logistics and leverage every tool available to provide unparalleled support to the warfighter.
“AI has its limits and we need to know how to leverage them for our businesses,” Magana said, stressing the importance of being intentional with the technology. “If we don’t embrace AI, we will be left behind. We need to continually learn and improve.”
