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Original Date: 02/19/2007
Revision Date: / /
Best Practice : Lean Manufacturing
The implementation of Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems Lean Maturity Model has provided a needed measurement structure for tracking the progress of its Largo, Florida, facility in implementing Lean concepts and practices and for providing assistance in understanding the behaviors exhibited by a Lean enterprise. The model is driving positive changes in the way business is conducted at the Largo facility.
Prior to 2004, Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems’ (NCS’) Largo facility did not have an effective system in place to monitor its progress in applying Lean concepts within the operation. This led to a benchmarking effort both within and outside of Raytheon’s NCS business segment and ultimately to the development of the NCS Lean Maturity Model (LMM) in Figure 2-1. In tracking the progress of an enterprise toward becoming Lean, the LMM defines 20 categories of Lean behavior with scoring criteria and serves to assist in understanding Lean practices, processes, and behaviors. Both internal and external assessments are conducted on a yearly basis.
One of the central tenets of the LMM model involves a “product- /customer-focused organization.” As a result, Raytheon Largo has initiated a value stream organization structure that creates cross-functional Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) to ensure product focus and maintain functional consistency. The IPT approach has led to real savings in a short period of time. As an example, the transmitter module’s IPT achieved a 72% decrease in cycle time, a 36% increase in throughput, and a 25% decrease in labor cost within days of initial implementation.
Senior management has placed particular emphasis on implementing Lean in inventory in 2007, with significant goals to cut inventory levels and to increase inventory turns as illustrated in Figure 2-2. Raytheon Largo has also developed a “Lean Acceleration Gate Matrix” to maintain a commitment from all value streams to accelerate their Lean implementation.
Figure 2-1. The NCS Lean Maturity Model
Figure 2-2. Largo Inventory Turns and Metric for 2007
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