Original Date: 07/25/2005
Revision Date: 09/12/2006

The ability to effectively apply configuration management metrics, particularly revision notice metrics, is essential to performing comprehensive continuous product improvement and to providing cogent insight into organizational health. To effectively and efficiently handle Revision Notice metrics, Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems developed the Revision Notice Visibility Tool, a comprehensive electronic tool that provides a visual image of revision notice activities and trends. Beyond the visual image, the Revision Notice Visibility Tool provides the ability to drill-down to supporting data, allowing sound root cause analysis.

Northrop Grumman Electronics Systems (NGES) produces a variety of electronic components, systems, and related products, each requiring robust configuration management (CM). The ability to effectively apply configuration management metrics, particularly engineering revision metrics, is essential to conducting comprehensive continuous product improvement and to providing cogent insight to organizational health.

A principal component of CM is the handling of revisions to engineering. The legacy NGES approach to revision notices (RNs) was largely manual and paper-based. While this approach adequately documented revisions to engineering, applying this data to initiatives such as continuous product improvement was labor-intensive and often too late to be used effectively.

To effectively and efficiently handle RN metrics, NGES developed the RN Visibility Tool, a comprehensive electronic tool (an advanced database) linked to NGES’ Integrated System for Engineers (ISE). The combination of the RN Visibility Tool and the ISE allows engineering drawings to be automatically updated with RNs. The database functions promote initiatives such as continuous product improvement and organizational health assessment.

The RN Visibility Tool organizes, analyzes, and displays RN metrics based on features including NGES business area, program, RN type, RN status, serial numbers, and hardware family. Typical reports are displayed as bar charts, with the RN data associated with one of these features plotted for time periods of interests. This display approach provides a quick visual image of RN activities and trends. Beyond the visual image, the RN Visibility Tool provides a convenient graphical user interface that allows the user to drill-down from the bar chart display. By simply selecting a data point on the bar chart, the complete collection of documents and data that support the selection can be accessed. This capability greatly enhances the ability to conduct sound root cause analysis, leading to product and organizational improvements.

The RN Visibility Tool provides NGES leadership and working-level personnel with comprehensive, readily accessible, and up-to-date RN metrics data. From these metrics, trends and anomalous data are identified and root cause analysis conducted. This analysis can be used for product improvement initiatives and to provide insight into organizational health attributes such as strengths and weaknesses within the engineering community.

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