Leaders for Manufacturing Class of ’06 visit Raytheon on annual plant tour
By Karen A. Vagts, ESD/LFM-SDM
August 20, 2004
Facility tours constitute a major component of the MIT Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) program curriculum. During these tours, LFM students see manufacturing theories in action and hear from factory personnel about the reality of implementing them.
LFM Class of '06 students and Raytheon representatives at the Raytheon Andover plant during the recent LFM plant tour.
On August 3, 2004, members of the LFM Class of 2006 participated in one of their first IADC academic tours when they visited the Andover, Massachusetts facility, which is operated by Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS). Raytheon Company is ranked as one of the nation's major defense contractors. An industry leader in defense, space, aviation, and related technologies with annual worldwide sales of over $18 billion, Raytheon is an LFM Industry Partners Company and has hired LFM student interns and alumni in several of its divisions.
IADC is a major facility within Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems division, whose customers include the U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force, and many other defense customers worldwide, including international customers such as NATO, Japan, ROC, etc. In his introduction to the LFM tour, Raytheon representative Roger Hinman emphasized that the current IDS mission is to provide integrated defense system solutions for its customers, through effective use of Customer Focused Marketing (CFM).
Following the introduction, the students broke into small groups and toured various manufacturing areas within IADC's non-classified sections. Here they saw in production segments of entire defense systems such as the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) radar and the PATRIOT Missile Defense systems and the AEGIS Weapon System (AWS) radar equipment as well as manufacturing areas for circuit cards and microwave components used in the systems. IADC shop floor managers and engineers explained their applications of Raytheon Six Sigma, Lean, and other methodologies and standards as well as how they complied with the stringent requirements of Federal agencies.
After the IADC tour, the LFM class participated in presentations by Raytheon interns and employees who have an LFM connection. Two members of the LFM '05 class are doing their required internships at Raytheon IDS. Neville McCaghren LFM '05, a software computer graduate, is focusing on improving operations through information availability, focusing on building an "information dashboard." Ronak Shah, LFM '05 is developing a strategy for deploying a Radio Frequency Identification [RFID] System at IADC. Both LFMs offered guidelines on how to select internships.
Following the interns' presentations, two LFM alumni currently working for Raytheon presented: Jason Seay and Lincoln Sise, both LFM '03s, are employed with the Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems (SAS) division in El Segundo, California. They described how they and other LFM graduates and interns working at SAS, including Chris Caballero '05 (intern), Elaine Cooper '95, Annable Flores '03, Brad Koetje '91, and Satish Krishnan '04, apply their LFM education. The concepts and tools that they implement include manufacturing load leveling, lean manufacturing, pull systems, solid state manufacturing, statistical analysis, supply chain management, and mechanical engineering design. Regardless of their responsibilities, all stressed that they ultimately benefited most from studying the "soft skills" - such as leadership, communications, team building, and organizational behavior. Seay and Sise also provided an overview of the mission and operations of the SAS division.
Throughout the IADC tour, LFM students were exposed to the workings and philosophy of a major defense contractor with a long timeframe (10 years for some systems) and a commitment to building integrated systems rather than separate components. Raytheon is strongly committed to manufacturing standards such as lean and Six Sigma (both emphasized in the LFM program); indeed, it offers Raytheon Six Sigma training to all employees and its own Raytheon Six Sigma logo is displayed prominently throughout IADC. In their presentations, Raytheon staff stressed that LFM interns and graduates can help the company to integrate lean manufacturing and to build systems “better, faster, cheaper” so that they can constantly improve their delivery of defense systems and to be flexible in a changing economic and military environment. In turn, the LFM ’06 students got to see how their classroom education can be put into action.