BREMERTON, Wash. –
Two Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility employees were recognized by Capt. Jip Mosman, commander, PSNS & IMF, for leading a team that codified a sustainable engineering execution system, which was shared with all four U.S. Navy shipyards.
The awardees, Mike Tracy, process management branch manager, Code 220, Resources, Training & Processes, and Bryson Delima, 2380.1RW Radioactive Waste branch head, built the engineering execution system upon early efforts of the engineering and production team that supported the Naval Sustainment System — Shipyards pilot program in 2019.
Their combined efforts improved the turnaround time for Deficiency Log resolution from 2.4 days to less than one day by addressing visibility and behaviors at all levels of the command.
Mosman included their achievement in his all-hands message to the workforce April 7, which celebrated some of the command’s biggest wins of March. He also presented a BZ100 sticker to both recipients in individual presentation ceremonies in appreciation of their dedication to excellence.
“You’re really setting the tone for the other shipyards,” Mosman said during the recognition ceremony for Delima. “This is a fantastic effort. We have world-class capabilities and an extremely talented workforce at PSNS & IMF, and the work you’re doing is so important. Thank you for leaning in. Keep at it.”
According to Matt VanRavenhorst, PSNS & IMF Naval Sustainment System – Shipyards champion, Tracy and Delima’s work has assisted in laying the foundation for the command’s future efforts to implement NSS-SY improvements across all shops, codes, and ultimately the corporation.
“What the team created was an important and different way of doing business,” VanRavenhorst said. “This is a foundational change in how efficiently our system supports both mechanics and engineers on the waterfront without compromising the rigors of technical compliance.”
Additionally, Tracy and Delima collected and analyzed more than 200 improvement ideas over six months from mechanics and engineers across the Naval Sea Systems Command enterprise, and codified them into eight categories so they could be examined, prioritized, and improved. They were able to group the data points into one of the following eight “structural opportunity” areas: Waterfront Engagement, Technical Direction, Planning (external), Capacity & 24-hour Shipyard, Estimating, Workforce Development, Planning (shipyard) and IT.
According to VanRavenhorst, Tracy and Delima’s work will be integrated into the command’s ongoing process improvement and systems transformation efforts in support of the command’s Perform-to-Plan, known as P2P, efforts, as well as the NSS-SY process.
Because all of the Navy’s shipyards are beginning to implement the Navy’s Public Shipyard Improvement Plan to help speed up and improve how ships are maintained, modernized, and retired, process improvements like those created by Tracy and Delima may pay dividends to the Navy for decades to come.
“Our collective workforce has an extraordinary level of ownership and pride in the way we support the Navy, which has been built upon generations of shipyard expertise,” said VanRavenhorst. “In order to honor this, Tracy and Delima, approached these improvements with respect for the past, excitement for the future, and a collaborative spirit. These same behaviors will be needed as we continue to create and implement process improvements from the PSIP, P2P, and NSS-SY, many of which will come from the other naval shipyards.”
VanRavenhorst said Tracy and Delima’s efforts in creativity and leadership set the standard for how process improvement efforts should go forward among the public shipyards.
(EDITOR's NOTE: This is the first part in a series of planed stories on process improvement and systems transformation at PSNS & IMF.)