Leaning out the Small Component Paint Process: Using Lean Six Sigma for Process Improvement at Tobyhanna Army Depot
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Research
Lean Six Sigma, DMAIC
Abstract
TYAD repairs and refurbishes a variety of Department of Defense systems that are essential for our military effectiveness and daily operations. Employees at TYAD have noticed a tall number of overrun hours for projects in their small component paint branch. These high number of overrun hours have led to TYAD steadily losing revenue and profitability on their projects. This capstone group utilized Lean Six Sigma’s (LSS) DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) process to decrease the number of overrun hours experienced and hopefully allow a way for greater throughput to go through the system. The efforts of this group led to discoveries of issues with the implementation of quality control tools. Our discoveries led to a revamped quality control protocol that will decrease the number of overrun hours experienced by TYAD and ultimately save them an estimated $478,000.00 over the course of the next three years.
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