Innovative Solutions & Support

Flying high┬áKeith Regan speaks with an Innovative Solutions & Support vice president to learn how changes in process and investments in technology on the ground will help the company fly to new heights of quality and customer satisfaction, even in a sputtering economy.  To an airplane pilot, instrumentation is a necessary lifeline, with gauges and displays serving as their eyes and ears, their window into how the aircraft is performing.  Since it was founded in 1988, Innovative Solutions & Support (IS&S) has become a leading provider of such instrumentation, transforming the latest computer and communications technology into solutions for the commercial air transport, military and business aviation markets. The Exton, Pennsylvania-based companyÔÇÖs solutions are most often found in retrofitted aircraft and offer advanced functionality, enhanced situational awareness, reduced pilot stress and workload, and improved safety for pilots. IS&S offerings include flat-panel display systems, flight information computers, engine and fuel instrumentation and other solutions that display a host of real-time data. In recent years the company has focused heavily on finding ways to make those solutions in a setting that allows for the highest possible quality and the fastest throughput times, says vice president of operations Bob Hyland. As it has done to almost every business in every sector, the sagging economy has buffeted IS&S, which at its peak employed about 200 people and now has 150 on the payroll. And in the fall of 2008, one of the companyÔÇÖs main OEM customers, Eclipse Aviation, filed for bankruptcy. As the page turned on 2009, the company ramped up its continuous improvement efforts with renewed focus, taking on a new process or operations area each month with an eye on finding efficiencies, driving out waste and assuring long-term quality. ÔÇ£Everyone recognizes that there are challenges facing all companies, and the things we can control most directly are our operations and the way we approach things,ÔÇØ says Hyland. IS&S has long embraced elements of lean and six sigma in its operations but more recently has sharpened its focus on quality improvements and process changes that yield faster throughput times and more responsiveness to customers, adds Hyland, a six sigma master black belt who joined the company two years ago.One of the more recent changes involves the printed circuit board assembly process, where the company hoped to reduce the defects-per-million rate it was experiencing. Printed circuit board assemblies are one of the highest-output elements of the companyÔÇÖs operations, creating opportunities for automation. A green-belt team was formed that included manufacturing and quality engineers and a production manager, that used process mapping and other quality improvement tools to analyze the process. Specification changes were made in the way boards were received from suppliers, and in addition IS&S decided to embrace automated optical inspection on the line. ÔÇ£Our inspectors do a good job, but the automated approach helps with throughput and gives us quicker feedback that we can incorporate immediately,ÔÇØ Hyland says. ÔÇ£If a defect in a solder connection is spotted, it can be addressed right away. The loop that information has to travel before the fix is made is a lot smaller, and that will keep things moving at a better pace.ÔÇØTesting has been a focus of improvement in other areas as well, with the company seeking ways to reduce the time it takes for new products to move from development testing through qualification testing and into production. On one particular product lineÔÇöa set of flat-panel displays that find their way into retrofitted Boeing 757s and 767sÔÇöall three major components had their testing time reduced by at least half. A data concentrator component saw testing time cut by 80 percent. More of the process has been automated, enabling a more easily repeatable approach. The improvement push has also found its way into front- and back-office processes and functions as well. The companyÔÇÖs aftermarket customer service business got a significant overhaul that has seen IS&S make much more robust use of its existing MRP systems. The way customer service calls and sales orders are handled was changed, with many of the interdepartmental hand-offs previously required now consolidated through the use of the software. ÔÇ£Everything and everybody goes to one place and works out of the same module,ÔÇØ says Hyland. There is plenty of room to grow in that area as well, with an automated status-notification system being tested that will send alerts to customers when a product has been shipped or a status changed. Though the existing MRP system has been largely used to make the changes, a key change was bringing in a programmer who could use SharePoint to tie various departments and disparate databases together. Engineering changes and how they are implemented have also been streamlined, with the goal of eliminating the need for a flood of shop paperwork to be generated for each change and enabling customer orders to be shepherded forward much more quickly because of reduced documentation handling.Another focus has been inventory reduction, with much of the shop floor reconfigured into cells, which has reduced setup time and enabled work-in-progress inventory to be reduced by as much as 75 percent. The companyÔÇÖs employees have quickly and widely embraced the continuous improvement journey, Hyland says, with everyone from technicians to inspectors getting involved directly with kaizen events, helping to reconfigure the manufacturing floor into focused cells, and suggesting other areas for improvement or study. Streamlining processes as a way of boosting throughput┬átimes is critical because virtually all products and solutions are custom-built from the time they are ordered. ÔÇ£When we get an order, it begins a development program,ÔÇØ says Hyland, ÔÇ£so weÔÇÖre definitely looking for good lead times to go along with the high quality that our products obviously must have in order for us to be successful.ÔÇØ ÔÇô Editorial research by Paul Wile┬á