Traction Software + a small bit of

customization= Observable Processes

Kevin DupreyManager, Design and Analysis Engineering

TUG Presentation

10/13/2010

Disclaimer

The opinions, comments, viewpoints, and all information presented are those of Kevin Duprey and not those of Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company

Agenda

• Overview of EBA&D

• Problem Statement – The “Black Hole” Bottleneck

• Problem Solution with Traction– Custom Form Inputs

– Small Custom Database

– Traction Section Tables

• Results – It’s still Early, but…– Process is now observable

– Data collection aiding in identifying means of fixing the bottleneck

• Ensign-Bickford Industries• Established in 1836• Privately Held• Entrepreneurial corporate

culture

• Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense

• 500 Employees• EBA&D Core Values

• Safety• Quality• On-time Delivery • Responsiveness

• ISO 9001:2000 & AS9100 Certified

• Source for safe, highly reliable, innovative products

• Annual double digit growth

Simsbury, CT

Phoenix, AZ

Moorpark, CA

Sterling, CT

Graham, KY

Albuquerque, NM

Ensign Bickford Realty Corp.

Avon, CT

DanChemDanville, VA

Applied Food Biotechnology, Inc

St. Charles, MO

Ensign-Bickford Renewable Energies, Inc

Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company EBA&D

Ensign-Bickford Industries, Inc.Caleb E. White

President & CEO

• Manufacturing

• Engineering• Manufacturing• Engineering

• Engineering• Manufacturing• Program Management

• Manufacturing

HEADQUARTERS• Engineering• Manufacturing• Program management• Contract s• Finance, HR, IT, SH&E

4

Industrial Systems• Oil & Gas Well Completion• Explosive Depth Hardening• Specialty Energetics

Aerospace Systems• Launch Vehicles, Satellites,

Aircraft

Vehicle Protection• Reactive Armor Systems

Tactical Systems• Missiles, Rockets, UAV’s

Soldier Systems• Breaching, Demolition &

EOD Systems

Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense CompanyMarkets We Serve

Providing System Solutions in Critical

Markets…

5

The “Black Hole” Bottleneck

• About 5 years ago EBA&D implemented a COTS ERP system to manage our business.– Like any complex system, the value of the output is

directly proportional to the quality of the input (or inversely: garbage in = garbage out)

– In order for customer order lines to drive demand for components to be ordered and systems to be manufactured, the configuration data needs to be input correctly – Enter the configuration management group.

The Problem (cont’)

• For the last three years 2 people have been primarily responsible for making sure the data is clean, correcting where it’s not, and generally ensuring the system works as expected.

• The process for accomplishing this, however was a complete “Black Hole”– Requests for data input or correction came from multiple sources; e-

mail, phone calls and even “drive-by shootings”.

– No visibility into the queue, and priorities were established by who screamed the loudest.

– Prior attempts to better understand the process involved using the group’s already scarce time to manually record information about workload

The SolutionCustom Input FormsGeneral Info

Section Tables to sort it all

Custom Forms

Resulting Traction Article

Underlying Database create table CM_REQUEST ( CMID VARCHAR(10), TYPE VARCHAR(40), TRACTIONID VARCHAR(100), PROGRAMNAME VARCHAR(100), PROGRAMCODE VARCHAR(100), SUBMITDATE DATE, SUBMITTER VARCHAR(20), NEEDDATE DATE, PROMISEDATE DATE, ASSIGNEE VARCHAR(20), STATUS VARCHAR(20), EXHOURS FLOAT, COMPLETEDATE DATE, TURNBACKS SMALLINT )

Benefits of the Database - Reports

Results• Most users have responded well to the new process

• Input has been simplified for most requests

• The process in now visible – everyone knows what’s in the queue

• Data collection enabling changes to fix the bottleneck

• Low cost to implement (good ROI)– Summer intern did most of the form creation