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AIM-120D into F-22A
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The AIM-120D AMRAAM Production Program Manager was a bit skeptical when he was asked to be team leader on a rapid improvement event under the “Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st century” process improvement framework. By the time they were done, however, they had cut the acquisition-delivery time down from 11 months (48 weeks) to 4.5 months (20 weeks) using AFSO 21 process improvement tools. Maj. Charles Seidel was impressed – and so were other weapons programs from HARM missile targeting to MALD decoys to the Small Diameter Bomb II, all of whom also also work with Raytheon and would begin related AFSO 21 efforts of their own.

How did they do it?

In total, about 22 people from the government and Raytheon spanning all functional specialties such as program managers, engineers, manufacturing experts, contracting officers, finance or pricing officers and auditors.

The government and industry teams were initially separate as they worked to map out their entire contracting “value stream,” then came together to create a “clean sheet” process based on each team’s map and ideas.

Green items were things the teams had the authority to change and wanted to change. Items where the team was unsure of their authority or thought were lower priority ideas were coded blue. Red was for things they couldn’t or wouldn’t change.

Prioritization and packaging of the suggestions into new processes and/or improvement sets was the last step, and as noted above, the results have been very positive. Read the whole story.