Improving to Grow and Growing to Deliver: Wilmington’s Transformation Story

As most leaders will tell you, site transformations don't happen overnight. They take time, effort, stakeholder buy-in, and strong leaders who can inspire people to embrace change. The value of transformation lies not only in the final outcomes but also in the small wins along the way that shift the culture and help build momentum.

Last March, GE Aerospace announced plans to invest nearly $1 billion in U.S. manufacturing and innovation, including $52 million for upgraded equipment and expanded capacity at the company's facility in Wilmington, North Carolina. Up and running for 56 years, the Wilmington plant builds the rotating parts and compressor airfoils (RPCA) for narrowbody and widebody aircraft engines - everything from the GEnx and GE90 to the CF34, CF6, CFM56, and CFM LEAP* - as well as the F414 for fighter jets. On the heels of the investment announcement, the Wilmington site zeroed in on one opportunity to complete some transformation prework - an overhaul of its inventory shipping and receiving area.

"A combination of factors helped us sharpen our focus on this area, including challenges in balancing inventory levels with customer demand and an overall aging aesthetic from nearly six decades of operation," says Charles Benton, the supplier shop planner. "We heard anecdotes of a similar project at GE Aerospace's West Jefferson RPCA site and received support to quickly and creatively facilitate problem-solving."

That support came courtesy of the Wilmington plant's "moonshine team," a small group of employees from various functions tasked with helping to develop innovative solutions to address specific challenges. The term "moonshine" signifies their ability to deliver with limited resources, much like the ingenuity employed by makers of moonshine. Except that instead of jury-rigging a still deep in the woods, the team leverages lean principles to prototype and test ideas quickly while fostering a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement.

At GE Aerospace in Wilmington, the moonshine team serves as a valuable resource for site leadership, operations, logistics, production schedulers, and operators. Together they apply FLIGHT DECK, GE Aerospace's proprietary lean operating model, to meet robust customer demands in the form of safety, quality, delivery, and cost (SQDC) - in that order. FLIGHT DECK comprises a mindset built on three key behaviors - respect for people, continuous improvement, and customer driven - as well as eight fundamentals, each of which includes a collection of lean tools and principles.

The First Steps

The Wilmington facility's core team on the inventory shipping and receiving area began by kicking off with the basics: establishing a baseline by mapping the current state. Using FLIGHT DECK fundamentals, they created an action plan that detailed each projected step, leveraging tools, templates, and directives.

"A few things we knew right away. We had minimal material storage at the point of use, and we had a sizable amount of unusable or unneeded material taking up space" says Ryan Cameron, the customer planner. "Our first move was to use the PFEP" - plan for every part - "tool to determine how much inventory is needed based on our specific demand."

PFEP is a lean tool that helps optimize inventory, material flow, and supply chain processes. Implement it correctly and you'll have the right parts available at the right time and in the right quantity. It also helps to standardize and document material and component dimensions to define sizing for storage. PFEP complements action planning and is a perfect precursor to more advanced activation of FLIGHT DECK.

With a solid understanding of what's needed when and the required storage dimensions, the team took to the drawing board. Literally. They created a detailed schematic of the existing 12,000 square feet of shipping and receiving space and leveraged another FLIGHT DECK fundamental, value stream mapping, to pinpoint inefficiencies in the flow of materials.

"Our biggest win here was that by applying these tools, we reclaimed space that was being used inefficiently," says Dan Romero, an industrial engineer. "We reclaimed 7,500 square feet of production floor space by relocating materials to the shipping and receiving warehouse, and added 11,000 square feet of vertical storage capacity in the warehouse by adjusting how we store surplus material, including gaining 2,500 square feet by relocating an office area and a chip reclaim semi-trailer" used for collecting valuable metal machining chips.

The Wilmington plant's inventory shipping and receiving area before and after utilizing FLIGHT DECK to reclaim space in the warehouse and add more than 11,000 square feet of storage capacity.

Creativity for the Win

Working within the existing footprint, the team then drafted a new schematic that made sense for their value stream. They nearly tripled their storage space by adopting a narrow-aisle solution and expanding vertically. Narrow-aisle forklifts now operate in aisles that are less than half the width required by conventional forklifts. This shift in approach ushered in a much more effective materials-handling process.

From a materials flow angle, the team is working to implement a mother-daughter cart delivery system to more efficiently move items from the Wilmington plant's shipping and receiving area to the shop floor and vice versa. The delivery system comprises tuggers (mother carts), each with up to six daughter carts in tow. The daughter carts can be safely and quickly loaded or unloaded with material. One person can then deliver up to six pieces.

Aside from being more efficient, the tugger system is also safer. It operates much like a city bus, following a predetermined shop floor route more precisely. A standard route allows for predictable traffic patterns, and one vehicle making one pass with multiple items reduces the risk of a vehicle/pedestrian incident.

"Well-planned tuggers move us away from ad hoc delivery and will improve the Wilmington facility's takt time, which is the rhythm and pace that our site needs to work at to meet demand," says Devin Severt, the site's FLIGHT DECK leader. "Thus far, we have one route up and running. Planning this route took concentrated time and effort, but the results and feedback have been very positive."

The team's path forward includes adding up to three more tugger systems. To establish these routes, they plan to leverage lean tools, using FLIGHT DECK to help guide them.

The facility's new tugger system in action. The tugger follows a predetermined route on the shop floor, which has improved both efficiency and safety.

Bridging Strategy and Results

The work completed in Wilmington and the improvements implemented have all been accomplished while maintaining the area's day-to-day workflow. The team points out that communication has been key, especially as processes have evolved.

"A lot of knowledge around the location of items and how things were done wasn't really documented. It was knowledge that was communicated among employees and passed down. After working here awhile, it just became instinctive," says Benton. "As we evolved, we took steps to address this, working closely with our boots on the ground to ensure smooth implementation."

The team leveraged 5S, a GE Aerospace FLIGHT DECK fundamental. 5S stands for "sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain." It's a simple yet powerful method for creating safe and productive environments. 5S ensures a clean and tidy workplace, which in Wilmington also means a happy and high-functioning workplace.

Additionally, the team created visual cues to help stakeholders quickly and easily understand expectations around pace, schedule, and quantity. This included the rollout of daily management boards for the area's targets and results.

The project team driving improvements in Wilmington continues to chart a path to support the site's transformation. They're meticulously working up action plans and embracing FLIGHT DECK to reduce waste and drive efficiencies to enable future growth.

"While relatively small wins, we see this as a big first step in the Wilmington site's transformation," says Cameron. "We're building momentum, and we can't wait to see what the future of flight will look like here in North Carolina."

* CFM56 and CFM LEAP engines are produced by CFM International, a 50-50 joint company between GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines.