A person in a white lab coat is soldering electronic components onto a circuit board at a workstation, reflecting continuous improvement. Various electronic tools and equipment are visible on the desk.

Empowering the Center of Excellence

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

Our challenge was to develop and implement a lean 6-Sigma solution that enabled a continuous supply of product to their customers within budget with a higher level of quality; ultimately changing the perception of the COE to a highly competitive strategic advantage for the company.

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)

Latest Insights

  • Manufacturing leadership team reviewing WIP and flow metrics during a lean transformation.

    Why Lean Transformations Plateau

    Early lean gains are real, and so is the plateau that follows. Tim Christlieb explains why the constraint shifts from individual processes to the…

  • Plant manager reviewing flow and constraints with a supervisor on a manufacturing floor shows operational excellence leadership behavior in practice

    Operational Excellence Is a Leadership Behavior

    Operational systems perform to the standard leadership allows. Tim Christlieb examines the tolerated behaviors that make congestion structural, the floor signals that reveal a…

View All Insights

Sign up to receive our latest insights!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Name*