Excellence in execution key to AEDC success

  • Published
  • By Bradley Hicks
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, TENN. --  In 2018, there is a renewed emphasis on two key components of the AEDC culture – excellence and quality

Over the last few years, Team AEDC has been working to elevate the overall quality of the product provided to customers. Inside Test Operations, the focus has been on more than just delivering hard drives full of raw test data but on decision quality information that better enables billion-dollar down-select decisions and more effective design trades, according to Col. Tim West, chief of the Test Operations Division.

“Ultimately, knowledge is our only product,” West said. “It’s not blowing air through a tunnel or putting hours on an engine. That’s how we generate our product, but it’s not the product. I am proud of the progress Team AEDC has made in driving down data uncertainty while elevating the analytical rigor in our customer deliverables.

“When AEDC delivers a quality product to our customers, we better enable weapon system program offices to make billion-dollar, down-select decisions, and we better equip the prime contractors we support to make smart design trades. The end result is quicker, more affordable delivery of game-changing capabilities to America’s warfighters.”

West also said that continuous quality improvement is vital in areas outside of test execution.

“Improving the quality of our maintenance program means higher test facility reliability across the complex,” West said. “Getting this right will be essential to meeting the demand signal we’re seeing for the next several years. Getting this wrong could lead to catastrophic failure, months of downtime, and millions in repair costs to restore our world-unique test capabilities – as we recently saw in the High Temperature Laboratory.”

The failure to properly close two valves in the HTL resulted in $1.3 million in damage and two months of downtime at a time when the customer demand signal for arc jet test support was 33 percent higher than the previous two years, according to West.

Contractors across AEDC have their own programs and measures to ensure that these components remain a focus throughout 2018 and into the future.

NAS Quality Absolutes

According to NAS Quality Manager Dan Sweety, the Quality Absolutes are five fundamental practices or behaviors that, when implemented, have been proven to minimize rework, improve first-time quality, and have demonstrated their ability to positively impact work execution, desired outcomes and customer satisfaction.

“Because each of our behaviors have such a significant impact on the quality of our work, it’s important that we emphasize and implement the correct behaviors when performing our work each day,” Sweety said. “The Quality Absolutes define five of the key behaviors and expectations.”

The NAS Quality Absolutes are:
• Stop When Unsure
• Follow Procedures
• Conduct Job Briefs
• Adhere to Verification/Hold Points
• Own Your Signature

Stopping when unsure, in short, means an employee should stop work when things do not seem right, if there is confusion or uncertainty, unexpected outcomes arise, or he or she is inexperienced with the task. Among the behaviors that lead to successfully following procedures are understanding the work instructions/procedures for the work being performed, ensuring use of the correct revision of the document(s), and adhering to all safety and security requirements.

The most significant impacts to building a strong Quality culture are made through employee engagement and by ensuring everyone is prepared to perform each task, Sweety said.

The Quality Absolute related to job briefs encourages the engagement of all work performers to conduct discussions of the tasks and address the task purpose and personnel assignments, safety and security requirements, as well as the potential hazards, risks and mitigation, previous lessons learned, and any questions or concerns.

“These discussions are valuable both prior to and after the work is complete in order to learn from our experiences,” Sweety said.

Adhering to verification/hold points requires work performers to be aware of all hold points. Hold points or verifications are points in a process or task that require independent verification, inspection and/or approval before proceeding to the next step.

Among the behaviors outlined in the Own Your Signature Absolute are verifying that information provided is correct and the actions specified have been completed before it is signed or stamped. This includes refusal to sign for work not performed or performed incorrectly and self-checking work before signing or sending electronically.

Sweety said because “human factors and our behaviors have such a significant impact on the quality of our work, it’s important that we emphasize and implement the correct behaviors when performing the complex work, which we do for our customers.”

“We’re going to be experiencing an increase in test rates,” he said. “That is a good thing, but this increased demand brings with it higher expectations and risks, so these fundamental behaviors become even potentially more valuable in preventing bad days.”

Personnel should now see posters featuring the NAS Quality Absolutes around Arnold AFB, and NAS leaders are actively spreading the message of Quality Absolutes through a variety of channels and will be providing team members with additional information on the Absolutes and their relevance to the workforce. Both the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex and Hypervelocity Tunnel 9 have rolled out the Quality Absolutes to their workforce as well.

Sweety summarized by stating that developing a culture that delivers quality results is vital to AEDC’s continued success and to the success of its customers.

“The most significant impact we can make on achieving ‘right the first time’ quality is by engaging each other and ensuring we are prepared for and understand each task,” he said.

ASO Quality Program

Akima Support Operations is among the other contractors at AEDC with their own quality programs in place.

“Continual improvement in all that we do is a basic objective of ASO,” said Warner Holt, ASO branch manager of Logistics & Base Maintenance. “Delivering quality services to our customers is a key part of our operating model.”

Holt said this is achieved by adhering to the principles of the ASO Quality Program. Those principles are:
• Maintain a focus on being a consistent and trustworthy partner for the government and our associate contractors at AEDC.
• Maintain a culture of open communication.
• Ensure a culture of continuous improvement related to the quality of ASO services to include our operations processes and procedures.
• Constantly monitoring ASO services and associated processes to ensure ASO quality objectives are met and that ASO will address any deviations in a timely manner.
• Ensuring that employees received the continuing education, targeted training and incentives necessary to achieve the required level of quality.
• ASO’s management team is committed to ensuring the company consistently fulfills its contract obligations.
• Management will work to ensure the professional and personal development of employees and exercises the principles of business quality through the constant improvement of ASO processes. The results of the processes will be monitored with the aim of preventing procedural deviations.
• ASO will maintain compliance with all applicable contractual, legal, regulatory and statutory requirements.

“The ASO management team will fulfill our commitment to quality in a way that will ensure all employees know, understand, and carry out our quality policy,” Holt said. “Our quality policy is the framework for determining and reviewing quality objectives and is a key factor in our annual management reviews.”

Holt said ASO conducts monthly Program Performance Reviews with Air Force leadership to review key aspects of its performance for all functional areas within its FSS contract. During the reviews, ASO management specifically discusses challenges, key metrics and performance highlights with a focus on ensuring “clear and open communications between ASO and our Air Force customers.”

Bhate Environmental Associates Quality Assurance

Bhate Environmental Associates performs environmental work at Arnold and is required to complete a quality assurance project plan ahead of field work.

Frank Gardner, program manager with Bhate, said the quality assurance project plan outlines how data will be collected and analyzed, among other project details and standards, and is necessary to ensure that collected data is acceptable and accurate.
“So it’s a very rigorous program that supports all the work that goes on,” Gardner said.

This, Gardner said, alleviates possible questions regarding the project and the data collected. He also said accurate data collected after following measures specified in a quality assurance project plan aids in decision making, as those in charge will have in hand accurate, reliable data with which to make project decisions.

The goal of the quality programs across Arnold AFB is to promote a quality culture that is every-present and consistently applied.
Contractors throughout Arnold stated personnel will be encouraged throughout 2018 to continue to keep the quality of their work in the forefront.