Lockheed Martin Aeronautics EDM Project

Lockheed Martin was facing a communication gap between procurement and fulfillment of orders that existed for 5+ years, causing several major problems within the production flow:

• Production process was completely manual and paper driven
• Work orders of 50+ pages would need to travel the line for hand-written sign-offs at each step
• Paper requesitions provided zero visibility into how and what work was being done

Communications between contracts and procurement are vastly improved following the implementation

Initially, they identified a need to solve their document control issues, but quickly realised that process improvement within multiple departments could also be achieved with the right solution. The primary driver for seeking an automated system was their procurement process.

Although they needed to eliminate paper in many areas of their business, perhaps more importantly they had to close a significant communication gap between contracts and procurement that had existed for more than 5 years. In their own language, “completing the circle” would allow them to compare pricing for a part they were purchasing today to their long term vendor agreement in order to provide buyers with the information they needed to make informed purchases and work together to take advantage of volume discounts.

Through a series of discussions with Dajon, LMA was able to envision other areas of their business that could benefit from the technology, specifically, Invoice processing in AP and worker instructions flowing electronically throughout their assembly process, providing enhanced quality controls, tracking and higher throughout.

By implementing electronic Document Management software and process automation, Lockheed Martin was able to simplify and expediate the order process, yielding in significant increase in productivity and customer satisfaction.

• Workflow is automated and tracked to provide visibility on where assemblies are in the process and release new work orders to next tool set
• Work Order Process places necessary procedures, worker instructions and process controls around QA
• Workflows track requisitions for parts from the generation process through quoting and finally into receipt (this allows LMA to tie purchased parts back to original quoted prices)
• AP department can process multiple types of invoices in order to match them up against the original purchase order

By working with iSynergy, LMA was able to actualise a 46% reduction in processing time, and a 49% cycle time reduction, yielding a 96% increase in productivity overall. Production delays were practically eliminated, and further scaling of the facility could begin to occur.