Point of Contact: Nancy L. Crook, Public Affairs Division Director Release No. 06-06
(904) 542-3168, extension 161
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 30, 2006

NADEP CO kicks off AIRSpeed Project
By Frank Taormina, Public Affairs Specialist

Naval Air (NAVAIR) Depot, Jacksonville Commanding Officer, Capt. John W. Scanlan II, recently kicked off his Black Belt Project, AIRSpeed Operational Maturity. In a meeting at the Depot on June 13, Capt. Scanlan addressed the AIRSpeed team on the importance of working as a team to accelerate AIRSpeed implementation so the entire Depot is fully engaged with Lean and Six Sigma. This is about fundamentally changing the way the Depot does its job every day by using the tools of AIRSpeed.

Capt. Scanlan attended two weeks of Black Belt training at the GE school in Cincinnati, Ohio. His next step is to complete his Black Belt project, which is no small task. “The purpose of the project is to drive the use of AIRSpeed in all parts of the Depot and at every level of the organization,” Captain Scanlan stated. “We will be measuring our AIRSpeed maturity as a leading indicator for our true objective, which is the improved performance to our Hoshin goals of Quality, Cost, and Delivery to Schedule. It is about the activities we do to improve, not the numerical score for an area,” he stressed. Once Capt. Scanlan completes his Black Belt project, the Depot will be in line with Rear Adm. Michael Hardee’s and NAVAIR AIRSpeed Champion, Rear Adm. Walter Skinner’s vision of being an AIRSpeed driven facility.

Already a leader in the aircraft repair industry and the largest employer in northeast Florida and southeast Georgia, the Depot is continually seeking opportunities to improve. The Depot is leading the way in the use of AIRSpeed, which is part of NAVAIR's solution to reduce the cost of doing business. AIRSpeed is a proven set of business tools to achieve cost-wise readiness through a system of Continuous Process Improvements (CPI) using tools such as Theory of Constraints (TOC), Lean, and Six-Sigma. Lean is a process improvement strategy that focuses on adding value to the product and the total elimination of waste in the value stream of the process. Lean uses incremental improvements to constantly eliminate waste and create standard workflows. Six-Sigma is a process improvement strategy that is based on reducing the variation of critical elements to improve the output of the process. Six-Sigma is driven by an understanding of customer needs, a disciplined use of facts, data, statistical analysis, and diligent attention to the control of our process. TOC is a system wide view that helps identify key constraints in processes and apply resources to those constraints to eliminate them. Simply put, AIRSpeed is a plant-wide approach to improving productivity and efficiency, which results in a better product to the customer at less cost to the taxpayers.

– USN –