Original Date: 09/14/1998
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

In the past, Raytheon Missile Systems Company’s (RMSC’s) Industrial Engineering group manually reviewed all aspects of the company’s production operations, per military specifications. Today, this group uses the latest software packages (e.g., ProModel, Microstation 95, EASE) to optimize production areas, reduce implementation risks, develop labor standards, and perform facilities engineering at RMSC as well as at suppliers’ sites.

The Industrial Engineering group’s systematic approach examines all aspects of production, and identifies possible impacts. Strategic subcontractor proposals are reviewed and analyzed for direct labor hour usage; material requirements; manufacturing flow; equipment utilization and needs; production cycle times; and labor standards and variances. Products are evaluated for producibility, cost of quality, cost of managing, manpower planning, and resource utilization. The group can also perform product improvement studies, make/buy decisions, bottleneck analysis, and labor efficiency studies. The objective of these reviews is to support negotiated reductions in pricing, benchmark supplier costs for continuous improvement, and help the supplier make a more efficiently built product.

The group also developed a labor standards system by establishing standardized processes and tools for standards generation, application, and estimation techniques. This company-wide system enables industrial engineers to quickly perform standards development and applications; maintain and improve their accuracy; and improve consistencies across RMSC. In addition, the Industrial Engineering group created a common database, and reduced method errors, electronic storage space, and cycle times.

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