$12.4M for War on Terror

NSWC Dahlgren improves business, saves $12.4M

by John Joyce
NSWC Dahlgren Corp. Communications

Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren employees recently found 12 ways to improve their business practices and save the Navy's Aegis program a projected $12.4 million over the next six years.

The savings will accrue as a result of changes made to the Aegis Program by over 70 employees who used relatively new business philosophies to the Department of Defense (DoD) called "Lean" and "Six Sigma."

"This team's performance has been exceptional and played an important role in our support to the warfighter," said NSWC Dahlgren Division Commander Joseph McGettigan, who nominated the team for a 2005 DoD Value Engineering Special Achievement award. "Lean is a tool that can help us better serve the warfighter and the nation, and we will apply it across the division, everywhere that it makes sense to do so."

Designed to minimize waste within the production process and to give the customer what they need, when they need it, without defects and at the lowest possible cost, Lean Six-Sigma is one of several programs used by the Navy to re-capitalize its $115 billion annual budget. The speed and quality of production at Dahlgren are already improving with Lean Six-Sigma principles that have been sweeping throughout the private sector for the past decade.

"We maximized taxpayer value by achieving the fastest rate of improvement in customer satisfaction, cost, quality, process speed and invested capital," said Lisa Manley, Head of the NSWC Dahlgren Lean Office. "We also aligned the workforce in application of Lean Principles to the Aegis Program using standardized approaches; and provided for continuous improvement by the identification and elimination of waste."

The Dahlgren Lean Team is one of a host of Lean Six-Sigma teams working within the Navy, Marines, Army, and Air Force that are making fundamental changes at their activities to improve productivity, efficiency, and quality - with the goal of improving return on investment and generating savings to support the global war on terrorism.

Military officials, however, emphasize that "Lean Six-Sigma" changes are meaningless if the process does not change - processes must be changed in order to see significant improvements, or it's just business as usual.

Part of implementing Lean Six-Sigma changes throughout DoD has been overcoming the suspicion and reluctance of those involved in the programs selected for a value stream analysis that reviews all current actions that can be changed to meet customer demand and expectations.

The Aegis Program at Dahlgren was no exception.

"When the Lean events began at NSWC, the attitude in the program was that this was something we were being forced into conducting," said Dawn Murphy, Aegis Program Manager in the Surface Ship Program Office at Dahlgren after Lean's successful implementation within the Aegis Program. "Change in process and product is something that has been needed for quite some time, but it has been difficult to find the time to re-engineer."

Managers began to express their concerns after Task Force Lean, a command-wide initiative to expand Lean efforts throughout the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), was launched in August of 2004 to promote the application of Lean principles across NAVSEA and its eight Naval Warfare Center Divisions that includes Dahlgren.

Initially, managers believed that Lean Six-Sigma efforts would result in the removal of resources that they would rather devote to the real work, so they were not supportive of the initiative. But once they saw the rapid and sustainable gains earned when well-trained people worked on high-priority projects (linked to the managers' business goals), they quickly became enthusiastic supporters of the Lean Six-Sigma training and upcoming rapid improvements in their programs.

"The Lean effort was the forcing function to bring about these improvements," said Murphy. "For each of the 12 Rapid Improvement Events (RIEs) we have conducted, every participant has commented on how much they learned about our own processes, how many efficiencies they were able to find in our processes, and how valuable the Lean effort has really been."

The Lean Team participants - employees without "green belt" or "black belt" training - learned to apply Lean Six-Sigma tools to the Aegis Program with the assistance of certified green and black belts who acted as facilitators.

Lean Six-Sigma black belts are considered change agents, leaders of teams, and high potential employees. Green belts are contributors and highly motivated team members, "the leaders of tomorrow."

Dahlgren's black and green belts assisted with the facilitation and development of hundreds of efficiencies during RIEs they conducted from January to December 2005 to improve the Aegis Program.

"I believe the changes we are making will indeed make Aegis a better program," said Murphy. "They will make us more valuable to our customers, our sponsors and, most importantly, the warfighter, and will enable us to be more efficient with the decreased budgets that we are facing. The improvements brought about through the RIEs will provide many benefits to the program, which in turn will benefit NSWC as a whole for years to come."