Good enough for the private sector

US Army Research, Development and Engineering CenterAs Keith Regan reports, winning the coveted Baldrige Quality Award is only one of many journeys toward excellence at the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Center. The US Army Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) develops 90 percent of the ArmyÔÇÖs armaments and ammunition, including warheads, explosives, all sizes of firearms, battlefield sensors, and advanced weaponry based on high-power microwaves, high-energy lasers, and nanotechnology. The center, based in Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, has produced a steady stream of cutting-edge technologies that give US soldiers a competitive edge on the battlefield, handling the process of turning ideas into products, overseeing production (though manufacturing is usually outsourced) and then helping the armed forces implement its innovations. For decades, ARDEC has been on a series of journeys aimed at increasing efficiency and raising quality, and several years ago it made the decision to change from a product-focused organization to a competency-based one. Those journeys helped ARDEC become the first-ever government-based business to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2007.The award is given to just a handful of organizations each year after a lengthy and rigorous application and review process that examines excellence in leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, information and analysis, human resource focus, process management and business results. This is just one outgrowth of the long-term quality and efficiency efforts at ARDEC, according to Donelle Denery, chief of the Strategic Management and Process Office and the organizationÔÇÖs Baldrige Quality lead. Through lean six sigma improvements, ARDEC has saved an estimated $3.2 billion between 2001 and 2007. That cost avoidance, Denery says, was a result of higher quality, lower risk and other process-focused improvements. Overall on lean six sigma projects, ARDEC estimates improvements in quality (91 percent), cost (70 percent), schedule (67 percent) and risk (84 percent).Lean six sigma has deep roots at ARDECÔÇöthe Department of Defense began using the Baldrige criteria for internal self-assessment as far back as the late 1980s, and a few years later the Army Communities of Excellence program was introduced. The agency boosted its efforts by creating a leadership team focused on improvement, which helps ensure that all the various projects being undertaken are aligned with a larger strategic intent. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖve made it integrated, so we donÔÇÖt have pockets of isolated improvement,ÔÇØ Denery says. At the same time, the improvements have been extended beyond technical areas such as R&D and into management and business-side operations, where efficiency has improved an estimated 40 percent. In fact, todayÔÇÖs ARDEC is doing much more with far fewer hands than in the past. At its peak, the center employed around 5,000 people. But a hiring freeze that started in 1991 and lasted nearly a decade saw the staff reduced dramatically. By the time the freeze was lifted, attrition had reduced the workforce by 40 percent to 2,700. Hiring began again in 1999, and the center now has 3,100 employees, yet it is performing more work than when it was fully staffed. As part of the Baldrige process, the center normalized past work to 2007 dollars and found that in 2007 it performed 40 percent more work with 40 percent fewer employees than in 1991. ÔÇ£ThatÔÇÖs what effectiveness, efficiency and productivity can do for you,ÔÇØ Denery notes. Part of that has been made possible by the sheer numbers of workers trained in the excellence programs. Almost 1,500ÔÇöa full 50 percent of current staffÔÇöhave attained green belt status, and the facility boasts ÔÇ£a couple hundredÔÇØ black belts as well. ÔÇ£The leaders definitely walk the talk,ÔÇØ Denery says. ÔÇ£They set the example for everyone else to follow.ÔÇØThe efforts have also helped ensure that ARDEC could continue to function even as many of its more senior staff departed. Like many organizations, ARDEC was facing a wave of retirements that threatened institutional knowledge and experience levels. ÔÇ£ThereÔÇÖs nowhere you can go to get a university degree in armaments,ÔÇØ Denery points out. Most of the scientists hired have degrees in one form or another of engineering but need to be trained in how those disciplines apply to the battlefield. The staff once estimated that it took a full two years for new hires to be brought up to speed on the ins and outs of designing armaments, a time frame that has been reduced to as little as six months, thanks in large part to an effort to capture and document how things are done at ARDEC. Hundreds of documents, including templates, forms and six sigma binders describing the processes at the center have been scanned and stored into the Oracle Collaboration Suite. In addition, ARDECÔÇÖs Armament Knowledge Database, a repository of technical armaments information and best practices, is available to help ARDECÔÇÖs young scientists and engineers. ÔÇ£All the information we could capture is available online for people to learn how we do business. ThereÔÇÖs a wealth of information out there at the fingertips of any employee who wants or needs it.ÔÇØ ARDEC recently hired its 1,000th engineer since 1999, meaning that more than half its key employees are new since that time. Many organizations face similar demographic shifts as baby boomers prepare to retire in large numbers in coming years. ÔÇ£ThereÔÇÖs a real need to be able to capture the intellectual knowledge of the more experienced workers,ÔÇØ Denery notes. Denery herself is soon to retire from ARDEC, but the journey will continue for the institution for years to come. ÔÇ£With the Baldrige criteria, itÔÇÖs always a journey,ÔÇØ she says, noting that award winners typically score around 650ÔÇô750 on a 1,000-point scale and that the criteria themselves are constantly being updated as well. ÔÇ£With lean six sigma, I feel like we have grabbed a lot of the low-hanging fruit with what weÔÇÖve done already, that the savings going forward may not be as high as they were in previous years, but there is a desire to keep moving higher and higher on the ladder. We feel like we will hit a tipping point with our training as well, and our goal is to have 90 percent of our people trained. Every year, we set aside money for training because we believe that having people trained for excellence is the way to achieve it, and we continually strive for it.ÔÇØ┬á