Rockwell Collins Lean Journey acheives decades long success

Rockwell Collins (now Collins Aerospace) CEO Clay Jones launched a Lean Electronics program in 1997. I joined the organization in Jan 1999, and was part of a massive transformation of Lean and Six Sigma methods that was still going strong when I left in 2017. Many improvement initiatives don’t last 3 years, so this is indeed a success story.

As an example of the success of the program, they acheved the following success in an office environment (publishing)

• 72% reduction in publishing cycle time
• 70% WIP reduction
• 38% productivity improvement
• 77% manuals inventory reduction

In the manufacturing area, they achieved the following results:

• 25% productivity improvement
• 46% reduction in inventory
• Cycle time reductions of 75% and greater

I will list some specific projects I worked on in other case studies, but I am very proud of the work I did to help bring Six Sigma into the program, help the initiative continue through a few ups and downs, help deploy it to two different facilities (Melbourne and Wilsonville) and change the culture through numerous conversations and teaching opportunities I had with employees, managers, suppliers and customers.

You can learn more about the history of Lean Electronics from a 2006 speech from Clay Jones, along with my breakdown and insights from his speech on my Lean Six Sigma Bursts podcast (Part 1 | Part 2)