Description
Team 15
Sam Carlton
Ashley Done
Raviteja Kosaraju
Jyothi Mallavarapu
IS@Work Problem Summary (ID1)
Boeing is one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world and works directly with the
government, which means there is bound to be red tape and bureaucracy to work through.
Procurement buys the parts that are put directly on military planes, so they require rigorous testing and
approvals. One of these approvals which takes anywhere from 1-6 months is what is called ?RFNIU
Approval?. This stands for Rent Free Non-Interference Use. Boeing is required to obtain this approval
when a supplier needs to use a tool that is owned by the government to make a certain part. To obtain
this approval, it requires multiple departments working together, mostly through email and manual
sharing of information. Being in an email format, these requests might be missed on the first request, or
the Contracts team simply does not follow up because it is not something that is constantly on their
plate. If we do not continually follow up on our approval requests, the government will let things slide
cost them, and in turn, the taxpayers more money. If we can fix this situation, we will be able to have a
much higher turn time on parts that require tooling, in turn saving time and money for the government.
For example, we had a part that was the highest priority in the government, aircraft on ground. This part
needed RFNIU approval, but the request got lost in a few email chains. That request did not move for
over 3 months because of the disconnect, and now, an F-15 was sitting, waiting for this part for an extra
three months.
Our team is determined to solve this disconnect and help expedite some of the parts that are
held up for this issue. The current process is as follows: the supplier tells us they require a tool to make
the part they are bidding. We provide information to our property management team through a
Microsoft Access Database. Property Management then determines if RFNIU is needed, and if so, they
send the information from our Access entry to the contracts team. Then, the contracts team sends the
information to the Government to request our RFNIU approval. Two years ago, we used to not have an
Access database for this, and when we introduced it, our initial property management request time was
cut from 1-3 months to just days. Before then, everything was done through email, which caused many
requests to get lost. While we have conquered the initial Property Management request, we still have
the same issue with the contracts request portion. A significant factor in this change would be
introducing accountability. When we begin tracking the time it takes for contracts to submit a request,
there will start to be pressure to bring those numbers down and increase efficiency. Our team
understands that we will not be able to change the process within the Government but decreasing the
turnaround time within Boeing is something we could accomplish with this.
When the Access database was created, it was a joint effort between Property Management and
Procurement agents. We worked closely to create something that was easy to use for all parties, and
still provided all the information needed to submit a request. When we first began working to expedite
this process, we created an excel sheet with submissions. We then realized that an Access database
would be a perfect solution for our problem. We have decided that if we expand the Access database to
include the Contracts team on it. When Property Management has evaluated all the information, they
can pass it on to Contracts to work in the same system. This would alleviate any disconnect or
miscommunication that would come with our current system. Our first step would be to create a team
comprised of Procurement Agents, Property Management, and Contracts. We would all determine the
important information that should be included on the original request, then we can all work out of one
system, rather than using Access as well as emails.
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