By Joe Caoile
NAVAIR Depot North Island

CORONADO, Calif. – Three months ago, Capt. James Woolway, NAVAIR Depot North Island commanding officer, described the increasing efforts of the Product Teams in applying AIRSpeed to reduce work in process (WIP), increase throughput, improve delivery and reduce costs. AIRSpeed implements best commercial practices such as Lean, Theory of Constraints, and Six Sigma to enable improvements and accelerate productivity. Lean eliminates waste and ensures that all steps are necessary in the value stream, Theory of constraints (TOC) eliminates bottlenecks to maximize throughput, and Six Sigma eliminates rework by controlling variations in the process.

Woolway then challenged all of the Depot competencies that provide critical production support and administrative processes to get involved in streamlining their processes through the toolsets of AIRSpeed. The Depot competencies responded to this challenge.

In May 2004, the first group of competency processes embarked on the Lean, TOC, and Six-Sigma journey. Value Stream managers (VSM), sent key members and cross functional stakeholders involved in the Local Engineering Directives (LED) Release Process, Material and Work request process (4235), Material Review Board Process (MRB), and the Rapid Reply Request (3R) process through the AirSpeed Boot Camp.

In June, the second group of Competency Process Teams began their Airspeed Boot Camp journey. One Team from the Industrial Production Department, the Depot’s Human Resources Department, the North Island Human Resource Office, and Navy Southwest Region Human Resource Service Center took on the challenge to improve the human resource recruitment process while another Team from the Depot’s Industrial Logistics Support Office, embarked on an objective to improve the overall Workload Capability Establishment process.

Airspeed Boot Camp is a workshop initiated at North Island, that fully integrates Lean, TOC, and Six Sigma. Teams with very specific process improvement objectives come together to learn while doing and actually applying the principles of Lean, TOC and Six Sigma to their team process. Teams meet through six modules, twice per week and complete the boot camp with the basic understanding of all three AIRSpeed toolsets while delivering a leaner more streamlined process.

In Module 1, the teams learn the building blocks of Lean and Six Sigma and how they work together to target and minimize waste; understand the concept of value as perceived by the customer; learn the evolution of organizations to the functional model and how to adapt to the flow production; and discover how waste erodes productivity.

In Module 2, teams learn tried and true methods for workplace organization and standardization; look for areas consumed with the seven wastes; complete the 6S checklist to see how their workplace compares to the best in industry; learn simple but effective ways of communicating priorities and improve productivity through visual basics.

Module 3 provides the basics of Flow; understanding the concepts of workplace balancing through the value stream mapping; how to identify bottlenecks and opportunities to Kaizen or improve to balance the flow to the customer demand; learn how to minimize set up, line balancing, scheduling, and take time techniques to improve deliveries.

Module 4 focuses on how kanbans (a production control system that uses cards or tickets as visual signals to trigger or control the flow of materials or parts and fixed container sizes with set floor space signal need) work and how to calculate required work-in-process (WIP) to improve flow and minimize inventory; understand the difference between push and pull methods and when to use them; learn the rules of kanban use and with visuals, how to possibly eliminate work orders and non-value add activities.

Module 5 provides the basics of Six Sigma tools and how they work with Lean to reduce defects and variations; review examples of statistical deviation, process variation, and process capability calculation; review other quality tools and their effective use to focus and solving the right problems.

Module 6 focus on teams and working together; learning the effective methods to improve employee involvement and tools for effective change management; understand why Lean, TOC and Six Sigma must be shared with others in the organization to sustain continuous improvement.

Participants who complete the Airspeed Boot Camp will not become experts in the tools of Lean, TOC, and Six Sigma but will have a solid understanding in the underlying principles. With continued practice and application of AIRSpeed to their selected process and other depot-vital process the teams chooses to streamline, participants will grow in their knowledge and skills.

The processes that we are improving and streamlining are vital to our Depot capabilities and disciplined production and support execution.

Meeting and exceeding warfighter demands is our No. 1 goal and our objective is to align support programs and services to the ever-changing needs of the war fighter. As the Depot undergoes AIRSpeed transformation, we anticipate deploying other Competency Teams and their respective processes through the Airspeed Boot Camp.

NAVAIR provides cost-wise readiness and dominant maritime combat power to make a great Navy and Marine Corps team better.

Caoile is the Depot’s deputy industrial quality director.