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

Raytheon Company, an early pioneer of defense technology since World War II, is the world’s leading missile defense organization, providing state-of-the-art systems and solutions to defend the free world. Raytheon is an industry leader in defense and government electronics, space, information technology, technical services, and business aviation and special mission aircraft with 80,000 employees worldwide and $20.2 billion in sales in 2004.

Raytheon is comprised of seven major business areas that include Integrated Defense Systems, Missile Systems, Space & Airborne Systems, Network Centric Systems, Intelligence & Information Systems, Raytheon Technical Services Company, and Homeland Security. Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) is Raytheon’s leader in mission systems integration, providing integrated air and missile defense and naval and maritime war fighting solutions to customers in 34 countries, with a strong international and domestic customer base. IDS employs more than 12,000 personnel worldwide and generated $3.5 billion in sales revenue in 2004. The BMP Survey was conducted at the IDS Integrated Air Defense Center (IADC) in Andover, Massachusetts, a major missile and surface radar manufacturing, operations and systems integration center.

The Andover IADC facility, a 1.2-million-square-foot multi-disciplined center, is the Operations headquarters for IDS and currently employs approximately 4,000 personnel. The facility is a low-volume/high-mix, multi-discipline Manufacturing, Engineering and Program Support facility that provides missile and radar products along with systems integration services for a customer base that includes the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, the U.S. Armed Forces, and international customers. The facility houses Manufacturing Centers of Excellence for circuit card assembly and metal fabrication, system manufacture and integration, sub- and final-missile integration, passive and active arrays, radar systems and sub-systems, and radar assembly and system integration.

Process-oriented manufacturing at the Andover Center focuses on lean/agile manufacturing centers, robust Raytheon Six Sigma™ (R6σ), Integrated Supply Chain, maturing production evolution through spiral development, and a SAP/APEX-based Business System. Cross Business Team (CBT) support facilitates the Center’s operations, integrating Engineering, Performance Excellence, Integrated Supply Chain, Information Technology, Finance, Environmental Health & Safety, Facilities, and Security.

The Integrated Area Defense Center has successfully implemented the principles of lean manufacturing, creating an infrastructure that incorporates Raytheon Six Sigma™ (R6σ) lean initiatives for value excellence with a Virtual Business System and mission assurance to achieve its goal of operational excellence. The facility’s focus on cross business partnerships has incorporated the involvement of all employees and real-time communications that drive optimal decisions, creating the RAMP SPEED that has been instrumental in the facility’s success as an industry leader.

Localized successes at the IADC’s Naval In-Service Radars Manufacturing Center, Circuit Card Assembly, and Microwave Assembly areas are being spread through individual employee engagements throughout the rest of the Center. Vigorous internal and external benchmarking combined with elevated training across the entire organization has energized a concerted workforce driving lean concepts. As a result of the facility’s lean transformation, the productivity gains at the IADC have been impressive. Legacy manufacturing floor space requirements have been reduced, enabling the co-location of non-manufacturing support functions that has turned the IADC into a multi- disciplined resource center. Through employee-driven improvements, product flow times have dramatically improved. The facility’s “No Doubt” customer-focused culture has successfully transformed customer relations, creating a workplace environment where every employee values his or her work product and realizes the importance of achieving Operational Excellence and Mission Assurance to produce products that work the first time, every time for the safety and lives of the warfighter customers. On February 15, 1991, President George H.W. Bush visited the Center to thank employees for producing the Patriot system that was critical to the United States victory in the Gulf War.

The success of lean transformation efforts was recognized when the Center won the prestigious 2005 Northeast Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence in support of lean manufacturing principles. Lean deployment has successfully driven corporate objectives down to the working level, connecting policy deployment through metrics and into prioritized projects that ties every employee to the direction and goals of the corporation. The facility’s Total Employee Involvement (TEI) process is dedicated to valuing employees and their ideas and to implementing their ideas, demonstrating management’s commitment to their belief that “lean is 90% people and 10% process.” The facility’s Center for Continuous Learning supports training programs to foster employee skill enhancement and to meet certification requirements, promoting the value of a productive workforce.

Lean transformation efforts at the IADC have fostered the corporate goals of being a customer-focused company, building on good performance to retain a competitive edge in core defense markets through a focus on key strategies that include mission support, technology, and mission assurance. The IADC has successfully employed Raytheon Six Sigma™ (R6σ) strategies to enhance productivity in support of operational excellence. The company’s commitment to value its employees has fostered team work and collaboration, recognizing and rewarding accomplishments and helping employees to improve their skills. Through continual process improvement efforts, the IADC is committed to sustaining performance excellence that stresses quality, productivity and growth.

The BMP Survey Team congratulates Raytheon’s Integrated Air Defense Center in Andover, Massachusetts for winning the 2005 Best Manufacturing Practices Award for Excellence and considers the following practices in this report to be among the best in industry and government.

TABLE OF ACRONYMS:
The following acronyms were used in this report:

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.