Original Date: 10/10/2005
Revision Date: / /

Raytheon’s Andover Integrated Defense Center engineering services established the Raise Your Hand web-based database tool in early 2002 to formalize a process for capturing issues from the hourly touch labor operators. Raise Your Hand is a closed-loop system that ensures issues are addressed on a timely basis, providing Raytheon leadership with an important source of real-time data that provides visibility of operator issues affecting productivity while ensuring that appropriate closure actions are addressed on a timely basis. Raise Your Hand also recognizes the value of operator inputs and encourages operators to identify issues requiring engineering attention for resolution.

Raytheon’s Andover facility established a formal process called Raise Your Hand (RYH) in early 2002 to enable hourly employees to identify problems and concerns that are addressed and tracked to closure by the engineering support staff. Prior to this time, Raytheon had no uniform process to address the issues the touch labor operators were experiencing with process documentation and procedures. Typically, the engineers would interface informally with the operators on the manufacturing floor to address these issues. This approach did not capture problems and did not ensure the closure of the issues that impacted and concerned the touch-labor operators. As a result, there was neither a systematic or consistent means to assure that issues would be addressed on a timely basis nor was there a system that provided ready visibility to Raytheon leadership on problems and concerns of the touch labor workforce. The implementation of the RYH web-based application tool provided a formal process to address these shortcomings.

Since 80% of the issues required engineering support for problem resolution, Raytheon’s Engineering staff became the process owners of RYH. RYH captures the issues input by the engineers after direct interface with the operators who identify issues or problems. Issues are compiled and managed in this application and tracked through closure in a closed-loop system, with engineering required to provide the resolving actions back to the operator who identified the issue. The database supports real-time data retrieval and analysis. Information from the database is typically reported on a monthly basis and can be tracked by the individual work center and/or the value stream and program.

Raytheon started RYH with the Patriot Program in early 2002 and has rolled it out to all the Integrated Air Defense Center (IADC) work areas. Expansion to the Integrated Defense System (IDS) centers for safety, security, and operational issues is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2005. To date 4,203 RYH issues have been entered. Only 24 issues remain open as of August 2005 compared to 60 open issues in August 2004. The average cycle time for closed issues has been decreased by 33% from 2004 to 2005. RYH has proved to be an important source of feedback that has improved procedures related to operations, assembly, safety, and testing performed by touch-labor personnel.

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