EA course impacts manufacturing, production surveillance

Courtesy Photo | Defense Contract Management Agency team members who attend Contract Management - Manufacturing 210, known as CMM 210, experience a curriculum based on real-world challenges industrial specialists and engineers have tackled in the field.  

FORT LEE, VA, UNITED STATES

09.08.2015

Story by Thomas Perry 

Defense Contract Management Agency

When Defense Contract Management Agency’s manufacturing surveillance community identified a need for additional production planning and control guidance, the Engineering and Analysis Directorate teamed with the Defense Acquisition University’s College of Contract Management to create CMM 210.

Pablo Ospina, EA industrial engineer, defined manufacturing production planning and control, or PP&C, as a collection of tools and strategies contractors use to ensure they can meet the ultimate manufacture goal, which is to deliver the required amount of products — on-time, per specification and within budget.

According to developers, CMM 210 benefited from the developmental synergy between agency subject matter experts and DAU Instructors Cynthia Kalina-Kaminsky and Shannon Minnich. The course draws much of its curriculum from real-world challenges industrial specialists and engineers have faced in the field.

“The course was designed to provide definitions of concepts, methodologies and strategies, which are common industry practice,” Ospina said. “In addition, the course exposes the students to a fair amount of exercises based on real-life scenarios, to show them the application of those concepts,” Ospina said. “Understanding these concepts will enable them to perform and document risk assessments focused in manufacturing PP&C processes, and take action based on the results of these assessments.”

This class is specifically designed for industrial specialists, industrial engineers and anyone assigned responsibilities for manufacturing and production surveillance, said Gina Schauer, DCMA International Directorate industrial specialist.

“Agency team members will benefit from more focused surveillance efforts, more effective communication with contractors and customers, and better support to other members of their internal team,” Schauer said. “Contractors will see less time spent on areas not requiring surveillance so the functional specialists can focus on actual issues. Moreover, an objective perspective from DCMA that helps to improve their business processes for better customer service and more income as they reduce costs of inefficient processes. Customers will experience an increase in added value, and insightful, verified reports.”

EA Industrial Engineer Yataiva Harris said student responses have been overwhelmingly positive and that attendees have enjoyed the examples, analysis tools and techniques, information, and group discussions.

“Students now see the connection between doing PP&C process reviews and their other work products such as conducting risk assessments and providing reports to customers,” Schauer said, confirming Harris’s assessment. “They now identify the value in doing additional levels of analysis to get to the true root cause and how that can help them focus their level of effort on what needs to be reported to the customer.”

Prospective students must register for the course using the Defense Acquisition University website, and organizers encourage students to enroll early because class sizes are small and individual courses tend to quickly reach max capacity.

• Date Taken: 09.08.2015
• Date Posted: 09.08.2015 14:04
• Story ID: 175435
• Location: FORT LEE, VA, US