Photo By Troy Miller | Shop 89’s personnel packs life rafts for USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77).... read more read more
Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s (NNSY) Strategic Framework is a tool to communicate the shipyard’s mission and vision statements, and shows how initiatives executed across the command tie together with why NNSY exists—to deliver warships. In order to bridge the gap between mission and vision, NNSY has identified four critical focus areas—our pillars. These pillars are the highest priority strategic focus areas we must urgently work to improve. They are Infrastructure; Dependable Mission Delivery; People Development; and Process Improvement and Innovation.
The NNSY Mission Pillar Team’s (MPT) priorities were identified to help improve the shipyard’s dependable mission delivery. These focus areas are: reduce overhead, optimize Direct Support Services (DSS), increase production efficiency, and inventory other direct work.
NNSY provides services to the Fleet and to other government agencies that do not directly correlate with Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) availability projects. Taking a closer look at those services, the Business and Strategic Planning Office (Code 1200) headed up a capabilities team that consisted of one person from each department.
“We created a process that would look to divest any non-core mission capabilities,” said Code 1200 Strategic Planning Branch Head Christi Claar. “It was vital that each department had a representative on the capabilities team because each department's mission intermingles with one another, even if they are unaware it does. Open communication would keep any department from feeling blindsided.”
Divesting a capability is turning a service the shipyard provides over to another agency, whether it be government or commercial. It is a challenging process that the shipyard does not take lightly.
“Divesting a capability will help narrow our focus to the waterfront, the CNO availabilities,” said Business and Strategic Planning Officer Cmdr. Lawrence Brandon. “However, this is where it gets tricky. If we give up a capability, then we are giving up the resources and funding for that capability as well. So we have to keep asking ourselves if this is the right course of action or not.”
With the assistance of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and NNSY’s leadership, a list was generated of non-core mission work. The capabilities team is tackling three items at a time, researching and investigating each one, to develop a recommended plan for the Department Head Group (DHG) to decide if divesting any particular capability is the correct course of action or not.
“We sent members of the capabilities team to areas like the life raft shop and the diesel shop to talk to them to find out everything they do,” said Brandon. “Those members will then provide the information they gathered to the team to see how divesting them would affect each department and the shipyard as a whole.”
The process that was created is not only for divesting capabilities, but it can be used for adding capabilities as well. “It helps us to take a look at the future and help determine what capabilities we will need down the road that we don’t have now,” said Claar. “The Columbia-class submarines and the Ford-class aircraft carriers are two prime examples. With new class vessels come new requirements that the shipyard never had to do before.”
In November, this process will be evaluated. “We will have the metrics needed to make sure we continue do this long term,” said Claar. “This should be a strategic effort, so we want to make sure we do this for long term.”
Any decisions on if a capability will be divested or not is still some time away. Brandon said, “We have the right people in the right places to make the decisions that need to be made to ensure America’s Shipyard continues to strive for excellence as its ultimate goal - delivering on time, every time, everywhere to protect America.”
| Date Taken: | 09.08.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 09.08.2021 07:05 |
| Story ID: | 404673 |
| Location: | PORTSMOUTH, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 70 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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