Boeing

The National Center for Advanced Technologies has presented the prestigious Defense Manufacturing Excellence Awards for 2000 to Jim Sinnett, vice president, Phantom Works Strategic Development, and a joint team of seven JDAM production and supplier management personnel from Boeing and the U.S. Air Force Systems Program Office (SPO).

The awards were presented recently at the Defense Manufacturing Conference in Tampa, Fla.

Sinnett won the individual award for "outstanding contributions to furthering manufacturing science and technology in the defense manufacturing community."

The joint U.S. Air Force/Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) team was honored for improving supplier business performance. The team operates a lean production system program-wide and has focused supplier development through the Air Force ManTech-sponsored Small/Medium Enterprise Initiative. The JDAM team includes Jon Schneider, Dave Ryan, Charlie Davis and Dave Kraft of Boeing; and Tim Keider, Chris Smith and Mike Grabinger of the Air Force SPO.

The team applied Boeing's world-class practices of lean JDAM production to help its defense-system suppliers improve their own productivity. This award specifically recognizes the valuable contributions attributable to the partnership between Boeing and the SPO.

The National Center for Advanced Technologies is a non-profit research and education foundation founded in 1990 to provide bridges among government, industry and academia. It encourages cooperative technology-development efforts.

The Defense Manufacturing Excellence Award is given annually to a small working group in the defense manufacturing community. The winner is acknowledged as having made outstanding contributions to furthering manufacturing science and technology in the United States over the past fiscal year. The award acknowledges the contributions of those scientists, designers, engineers or managers of manufacturing who have sought to research, develop or practice ways and means to increase productivity, affordability or technical superiority of U.S. defense systems.

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