By Vicky Falcon
NAVAIR Headquarters Public Affairs Office

This month a pilot project begins within NAVAIR that will bring conformity and efficiency to a process that has been inconsistently followed for many years.

The J&A, or Justification and Approval to Limit Competition, is used within the Navy’s acquisition process to gain approval to contract on a sole source basis or to limit competition. J&As are common enough throughout NAVAIR (there were more than 480 J&As at NAVAIR this fiscal year), that they affect every contract specialist within every NAVAIR Business Unit.

The problem with J&As, according to contract specialist and NAVAIR AIRSpeed Black Belt Joan Devlin, is that NAVAIR Instruction 4200.31D is being interpreted a variety of different ways. “Although the instruction provides adequate policy guidance, it may be confusing to personnel new to the acquisition field and is being interpreted differently by the NAVAIR employees,” said Devlin. “Variation leads to complexity, which leads to poor quality.”

Devlin moderated a Kaizen event in August with a team consisting of members from AIR-2.0/AIR-1.0, with a subject matter expert from the V-22 program office (PMA-275) and Office of Counsel (AIR-11.0). With Devlin was Navy Reservist LCDR Chris Camacho, a member of the NAVAIR Reserve Program (NRP) who works as an industry Black Belt (Lean Six Sigma expert) with GE Aircraft Engines. Camacho, who is part of the AIRSpeed initiative, assisted the event as mentor and advisor, providing guidance and answering questions.

“One of the key elements of Lean Six Sigma is to reduce the variation within a process,” said Camacho. “This process and associated project was an ideal cornerstone for implementing and deploying Lean Six Sigma in the 2.0 competency and serves as a benchmark for subsequent projects.”

During the Kaizen event the current J&A process was detailed in what participants call a “value stream map.” According to Devlin, the value stream map is an exhaustive description including touch times (the number and duration of times the product is handled) and waiting times. “Do-over” and review loops are included, as well, to come up with a complete cycle time for the process.

The value stream map revealed that the J&A process had 26 steps and 17 rework loops and the cycle time was anywhere from 27.75to 129 days.

Once the cycle time is determined, the next step in a Kaizen is to develop a “future” value stream map where opportunities for improvement are identified and repetitive and unnecessary steps are eliminated, thus streamlining the process.

“In order for us to eliminate the redo-loops, we decided to create a new template for the instruction,” said Devlin. “We prepared an intuitive, easy-to-use template that is informative, as well. By using the template, users will be in compliance without even having to read the instruction.” The template also eliminates all unnecessary data by addressing only the statutory and regulatory J&A requirements and lends itself to providing objective data requiring little subjective rework changes.

According to Camacho, the use of templates in industry is very common. “They are a ‘quick win’ in crafting solutions that help reduce input variation, thereby reducing output variation and leading to a more controlled process and higher quality end product.”

For example, Devlin explained, the NAVAIR instruction requires a market survey, but the previous example offered no explanation to users on how to conduct a market survey. The new template will have a hyperlink that fully explains how to do a market survey for the J&A.

By using the new template, says Devlin, the process for J&As will now have 11-13 steps, depending on whether the process ends with NAVAIR or Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy. There are no rework loops and the cycle time is anywhere from 16 to 40.5 days. This is a reduction of 50% in the number of steps and cycle time.

According to Camacho, the J&A future-state value stream will save a minimum of two man-years within the 2.0 competency. “I suspect there will also be additional savings in workload reduction in other functional areas that were not taken into account in this measurement,” he said.

“Our pilot will be completed when four J&As go through each step of the process with no stops or rework,” said Devlin, something that has never been done before.

Even with a successful pilot, the team will put a control plan in place that will check the process for a year, continually tweaking the template to make it better.

For more information on the J&A Kaizen event, contact [email protected]. For more information about NAVAIR AIRSpeed, go to http://www.navair.navy.mil/navairairspeed/.