Incorporation of Lean methods in Special problem management at Lockheed Martin. A case on eliminating waste in the process flow of identification and resolution of special problems occurring in fighter jet testing labs.
This was a team effort project which focused on the application of lean methodologies for continuous improvement processes. The case study was on a set of problems encountered in a highly sensitive department at a company called Lockheed Martin Corporation (LM). The department is responsible for testing systems quality of F-15 fighter jets at flight simulation labs within the department. Due to high sensitive nature of security, there was limited access to the facility, however With a set of Lockheed Martin engineers on our team, we were able to gain firsthand insight on processes and implementation access. After detailed discussion, our team was able to narrow a small LM process down to work on, known as the Special Problems (SP) process, which we believe to have been a solid foundation to our project. Our team was able to apply eight out of the fourteen Toyota Production System (TPS) principles to the SP process to discover flaws and waste to make improvements to this LM process of the department.
Problem with the SPs is that they take too much time to resolve, you have different testing engineers reporting same problem over and over to systems engineers. As a result systems engineers encountered waste in overprocessing, motion, waiting and transporting of logged information on a designated computers.
Other limitations encountered during the project were cooperation of lab engineers during the project, restriction of foreign devices (computers,laptops) into the simulation lab, Inability to recover items taken into the lab including writing pads, notes, ball pen. (No item taken into the labs can be brought back out) problem of recollection; too much emphasis and reliability on feedback from testing engineers on special problems.
Solutions introduced into the process included creation of visual control boards for SPs identified to avoid repetition, Created a checklist process for reporting SPs by testing engineers Created binders and indexcards in simulation labs for quick resolution by testing engineers. etc.
Based on data gathered at start of project and data gathered after implementation of TPS principals leadtime for resolving and closing SPs reduced, Overprocessing was curtailed to the barest minimum, better handling of special problems and waste of motion by testing engineers was reduced indictation an 80% improvement in the reporting process and resolution of SPs.