CLIENT INDUSTRY: Aerospace and Defense Company
SOLUTION: Acquisitions and Integrations, Operational Excellence
As a result of a merger, our client consolidated multiple circuit card assembly board manufacturing centers into a single location, and created a corporate “Center of Excellence” (COE) for Circuit Card Assembly. The COE was chartered to provide build to print assembly of circuit cards for the corporation, which included over 50 defense programs located in 5 geographic locations in the U.S. The corporation invested $60M to create the COE and employeed approximately 800 people.
The COE was struggling to keep their customers satisfied primarily driven by poor schedule performance, cost overruns and quality issues found during test. The corporation was reconsidering their decision as a result of the poor performance.
Business Challenge
Solution
- Developed an overall operating strategy integrating customer needs and current capabilities
- Dramatically reduced cycle time from customer order to delivery
- Implemented continuous flow of product based on customer demand
- Upgraded product verification and integrated customer testing at a lower level
- Implemented a Quality corrective action program
- Developed a balanced set of metrics to drive the strategy and highlight gaps
- Focused on team effectiveness through training, talent upgrade, team-based management and organized structure
Results
The COE experienced significant improvement in all operating measures
- Schedule position improved from below 70% on commitments to over 97%
- Productivity increased by 40% within the cells
- Quality performance improved by 90% on customer escapes
- The COE under-ran budgets and returned over $15M to their customers
- Overall program performance went from “very poor” (15 Red out of 50 total) to “Excellent” (0 Red out of 50 total)
