Dr. James Meyl has worked at Tobyhanna Army Depot (TYAD) since 1984 in escalating levels of leadership that have brought him to his current role as the Total Quality  Management (TQM) Administrator for TYAD.  In his capacity as the Depot’s TQM Administrator, Dr. Meyl is responsible for benchmarking and the administration and facilitation of the Depot’s strategic plan and corporate philosophy training, implementation, and sustainment.  TYAD has evolved from a traditional organization to a team-based organization in which the entire workforce is focused on the business and the success of the business through their knowledge and understanding of TYAD’s key business objectives and what role they play in providing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.  In addition to coordinating training, implementation, and sustainment efforts for TYAD employees, Dr. Meyl is the Point of Contact (POC) for the Best Manufacturing Practices (BMP) Program after TYAD hosted its second BMP Survey in July 2006.  As TYAD’s POC, Dr. Meyl receives and responds to inquiries about the Depot’s best practices from readers who have visited the BMP Web site and read TYAD’s survey report detailing the facility’s best practices.  BMP’s Web site receives approximately one million hits monthly.  Dr. Meyl also coordinates the participation of other TYAD employees in BMP surveys to garner new information that will be valuable to the Depot.

     TYAD is the largest, full-service electronics maintenance facility in the Department of Defense (DoD) with a total mission to “Sustain and Integrate Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Systems for the Joint Warfighter.”  TYAD provides high-quality support to the warfighter, including the Army, the Navy, the Air Force the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard.  Dr. Meyl first learned about the BMP Program in 1998 and contacted BMP technical advisors to schedule a survey. 

     Surveyed organizations are in the BMP database and are regularly contacted by other organizations for benchmarking visits that may lead to improved processes.  Following TYAD’s July 2006 survey, Dr. Meyl has established teams of subject matter experts to visit companies that have also been surveyed by BMP to benchmark common processes.  To date, five companies have been visited. TYAD recently sent a team of subject matter experts to a major defense contractor to benchmark that company’s Lean manufacturing processes.  Dr. Meyl presents the findings of the subject matter experts in a quarterly report to TYAD’s Primary Team, who then prioritizes those findings to determine what TYAD will implement.

     “Benchmarking has enabled TYAD to establish operating targets and productivity improvement programs based on industry best practices, which has resulted in superior performance in our processes and has helped improve the Depot’s competitive posture.”

     According to Dr. Meyl, BMP surveys are not audits.  Subject matter experts are providing companies with feedback and a roadmap to follow for how to make a process a best practice.  BMP Surveys show that a company has been recognized as a high-performing facility by an outside organization in specific areas.