Challenge

The Achieving Competitive Excellence (ACE) program is the continuous improvement operating system for all of United Technologies Corporation (UTC). ACE is a quality assurance program pioneered at UTC to insure industry-leading quality in all products and processes. Business units within UTC challenge themselves to reach process maturity levels identified within ACE as bronze, silver, and gold. Sikorsky's Life Cycle Support & Technology was certified ACE Gold in 2004. However, a requirement of the gold designation is to continually improve performance. LCS&T must be innovative and agile to improve on its Gold level performance in the face of changes in workforce, customer requirements, and organizational goals.

Solution

As in other programs such as Six Sigma, TQM, etc., ACE relies on the ability to control, measure, and improve business processes. Modus21 helped LCS&T discover that Business Process Management technology is a natural fit with the ACE program. Modus21 implemented Metastorm's award winning BPM platform to support process improvement efforts in the areas of Technical Publications and the Fleet Management Operations Center. Formerly paper forms and spreadsheet driven, users in the BPM system use a To Do list to view their work, take action, generate reports, and generate deliverables to the customer.

Result

The use of Metastorm's web based process management tool provides the visual workspace and process enforcement required by the program. More importantly, the ability to visually map a process in detail, publish that to users via a workflow engine, proactively manage process issues, analyze business metrics, and simulate improvement measures supports the full process lifecycle contained within the ACE program. With Modus21 and Metastorm BPM, LCS&T now has the support and tools in place to continuously improve its performance and thereby fulfill the ideals of the ACE Gold certification.