Original Date: 02/19/2007
Revision Date: / /

The Corrective Action Board at Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems Manufacturing Center in Largo, Florida, provides a systematic approach to quality management for all the facility’s business processes. The Corrective Action Board addresses issues identified in functional and product areas while focusing on long-term systemic corrective actions and providing effectiveness measurement tools for corrective actions and plantwide performance.

The previous business process review and improvement methodology at Raytheon's Network Centric Systems (NCS) Manufacturing Center in Largo, Florida, previous consisted of different types of management reviews including monthly site reviews, Quality Assurance (QA) quarterly reviews, and program reviews with the customers. Reviews, however, were not integrated and lacked a consistent message. Not all functional departments participated in the review process and some reviews were conducted only by specific functional groups, creating the potential for gaps and /or scope overlaps.

In January 2005, the Raytheon Largo Corrective Action Board (CAB) was established as a forum to review all business processes, including technical disciplines, and all support functions such as Finance, Accounting, Safety, QA, Human Resources, and IT. The CAB includes management representatives from all functional groups at the Largo facility and has replaced other types of business process review meetings. The presence of all functions ensures that the organization responsible for improvement is identified and that there is commitment from all knowledge areas at the plant.

At CAB meetings, each function presents key performance metrics that are reviewed by CAB members from Raytheon Largo’s senior leadership team. This type of collaborative peer review allows members to look across functions to identify common process issues and resource constraints. The metrics provide agreed-upon measurements of overall company health and the effectiveness of previously implemented corrective actions. CAB reviews also include identification of new metrics for functional departments and reconsideration of old metrics.

The CAB resolves systemic issues that were identified on the product side by Integrated Product Team Leaders (IPTLs). IPTLs are responsible for near-term solutions of these issues within their programs, then forward the functional systems process issues to QA for review and analysis before QA sends them to the CAB for long-term systemic corrective actions.

IPTL-identified issues go through the CAB multidisciplinary troubleshooting process during which the responsible functional area (or areas) is identified and new effectiveness measurement metrics are established that can be either cross-functional or specific to a functional department. Examples of results from process improvements introduced by the CAB include: