While working in procurement at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale, California, there were many processes in place that needed improvements. In this paper I plan to analyze how the organization I worked for improved its' processes. I will provide examples to support the processes and my own ideas for improving them.
In my organization we purchased electronics for all the programs within Lockheed Martin that were based in Sunnyvale. Some of the processes that my organization was improving on were time management, [reducing time to place an order?] reducing the supplier base and reducing requirements. "The organization assigned the purchasing function usually has several functions and responsibilities. It must acquire items that conform to the requirements specified and obtain these items in time to support manufacturing schedules, and the items must be procured at a minimum cost." (Cappels[, page]) Our organization found that too much time was being spent getting the order to our department. The parts had to go through too many people before it finally reached our organization. The engineer began the process by filling out a form and sending it to a planner who would enter it into Sunnyvales' [Sunnyvale's] own computer based program called PROMIS. PROMIS would route the information to Quality Assurance (Q.A.) to have the proper requirements (called T-codes) added to the part. These requirements called out packaging specifications, supplier quality levels, and other provisions that may be required on a specific part. Once the T-codes had been applied, PROMIS directed the part to the correct purchasing organization. Once our organization received the order in PROMIS they would then direct th ...