JPPSO-NE area of responsibility expanding

  • Published
  • By Capt. Geoff Buteau
  • 66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
HANSCOM AFB, Mass. --  The Joint Personal Property Shipping Office for the Northeast region, known as JPPSO-NE, is located in Chelmsford, Mass., and is a tenant unit of Hanscom. The work accomplished in the office, however, extends far beyond the boundaries of Massachusetts and even New England.

Personnel assigned to JPPSO-NE will complete the Air Force Regionalization Concept in November 2008 by adding Langley AFB, Va., to their area of responsibility.

The regionalization concept is an effort by the Air Force to strengthen the face-to-face customer service within the JPPSO community while streamlining the administrative, or "back office," operations, such as booking shipments, managing storage, tracking and paying invoices, and scoring shipments into one of three JPPSO regions, said Russell DePietro, deputy director for JPPSO-NE.

The change allows base-level personal property processing offices employees to concentrate their efforts on "front-office" operations, to include counseling members on their movement entitlements and site quality assurance inspections.

"The purpose of regionalization is to dedicate more time to the customers," Mr. DePietro said. Since the servicing locations can now focus on the customer almost 100 percent of the time, the specialists' mastery of entitlements and other customer-related issues should grow, he said.

JPPSO-NE personnel have been expanding their area of responsibility under the Air Force regionalization concept since April 2007 when they picked up back office responsibilities for Dover AFB, Del.

Support was later expanded to include Scott AFB, Ill., in October 2007, along with Naval Submarine Base New London, Conn.; Naval Station Newport, R.I.; and Naval Support Unit Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

In April of 2008, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio; Shaw AFB, S.C.; and Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., were added. Langley AFB, Va., and personal property processing offices located at Fort Monroe, Va., and Fort Eustis, Va., are scheduled in the upcoming round of regionalization. Additionally, the JPPSO-NE staff supports several Coast Guard units as well.

Mr. DePietro has trained base-level personal property processing personnel at Hanscom and other locations on sound customer relations practices. "Knowing your sense of purpose" is a theme he has adopted during training sessions after researching new practices of and interviewing with two major national financial firms about their member-care initiatives, he said.