Government Furnished Material Improvement Process

Reducing VIRGINIA-Class Submarine (VCS) construction costs to $2B and cycle time to 60-months are the primary goals to increasing acquisition and maintaining the submarine industrial base. The objective of this Office of Naval Research (ONR) Government Furnished Material (GFM) Improvement Project is to pilot a streamlined GFM process that establishes common material identification between General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB), SUPSHIP, Navy Program Acquisition Resource Managers (PARMS) and Navy-contracted GFM vendors

The existing GFM process at Electric Boat Corporation results in significant rework and high cycle times. The current process results in a mismatch between incoming GFM identification provided by the Navy or Navy-contracted suppliers and the previously-identified requirements in Electric Boat’s technology data systems. This mismatch requires significant manual intervention and increased labor hours to be incurred, as the GFM material moves through the Receiving, Procurement Quality Analysis, Inspection, Storage processes. A Future State Value Stream Map will be developed to identify the desired Mainstream GFM process. These maps will support conduct of a Gap Analysis review, which will be performed to compare the Current State and Future State Process Maps, and review the Problems/Issues Matrix to identify the most significant areas of opportunity to streamline GFM process flow, and produce improvements in cost and cycle time performance. This list of opportunities will be documented using a prioritized GFM Improvement Action Plan, resulting in projects that will be executed in order to achieve the task goals. Acting on the prioritized GFM Improvement Action Plan, the project team will execute process changes to achieve the Task objectives:

1). Prototype a common material identification between GDEB, SUPSHIP, Navy Program Acquisition Resource Managers (PARMS), and Navy-contracted GFM vendors.

2). Establish a “mainstream” process, similar to the current Contractor Furnished Material (CFM) process, that will eliminate significant manual intervention (and associated VIRGINIA-Class Submarine labor hours) required to receive and issue GFM to the manufacturing and installation trades.

Project Related Reports & Documents