Challenge

Our client, the Southwest Regional Maintenance Center (SWRMC), faced lagging throughput and high backlog. Recent reorganizations caused major disruptions in the ship maintenance job planning process. Consequently, the organization faced personnel cuts and a near term increase of work.

Assistance Required

Replace 192 sq. feet of ineffective flowcharts of flowcharts and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) results with a system dynamics model. Use the model to evaluate proposed management changes in the job planning process.

Solution

CACI built a comprehensive model of the job planning process which provided insight into the leverage points that governed job planning. The model demonstrated that several seemingly attractive process changes would have no perceptible influence on system performance. This evaluation allowed SWRMC to identify the real leverage points and to concentrate on changes that would improve effectiveness.

Additionally, we identified that the client connects a long string of asynchronous processes and does not make use of finished goods inventories or other supply chain precepts. Erratic work submittal rates are passed to the ship repair activities without dampening or well designed consideration for downstream processing requirements. What was thought to be a sound process actually creates wide perturbation in repair activity workload.

Results

The center's senior management understands their planning process better and can identify the changes that will lead to real productivity improvements. The modeling effort has been expanded to include similar east coast centers. The model results provided the cost-benefit analysis that convinced the client to view maintenance planning as part of an integrated supply chain.

For additional information contact Rick Dansey, 703-679-4286, rdansey@caci.com