PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. - The Program Executive Office for Ammunition recently received a 2010 Department of Defense Value Engineering (VE) award for cost-saving efforts in the past year.
Value Engineering is a functional analysis process to identify actions that reduce cost, increase quality and improve mission capabilities across the entire DoD enterprise, according to a DoD news release announcing the award.
PEO Ammunition won a VE award in the “Special” category. Special awards recognize outstanding contribution to the VE program, which demonstrate innovative approaches and applications and/or expand the benefits of VE.
Jim Shields, Deputy PEO Ammunition, accepted the VE award on behalf of PEO Ammunition during an awards ceremony June 22 in the Pentagon Auditorium.
“I was very proud to accept the value engineering award on behalf of the PEO Ammunition and Team Picatinny for all their terrific efforts in exceeding our value engineering goal for fiscal year 2010,” Shields said.
“In this current environment we have to do everything we can to improve efficiency and save money, and value engineering is one of our most important processes to achieve that end,” he said. “I'm pleased at the Value Engineering results we routinely achieve here at Picatinny while we continue to provide our service members with safe, reliable, world-class ammunition and weapons systems.”
In fiscal year 2010, PEO Ammunition’s assigned VE goal was $10 million. However, the organization exceeded its goal by nearly 200 percent with a total savings of $19.9 million.
The PEO achieved this success through efforts such as eliminating duplicate testing for a new 30mm medium caliber packaging.
The existing 30mm packaging configuration was redesigned because it was expensive and the Army wanted to improve the overall durability of the packaging, said Jason Runell, Supervisory Engineer for the Project Manager Maneuver Ammunitions Systems (PM-MAS) Packaging Branch.
“We developed an improved internal support system that was less expensive and capable of protecting the ammo throughout our rigorous logistics lifecycle,” said Runell. “As a result of the change to the packaging configuration, we needed to re-Hazard Classify the system.”
The Final Hazard Classification (FHC) ensures the ammunition is properly packed and marked for safe transportation and storage.
The FHC can be determined through testing, but that is costly.
Instead PM MAS employees worked with the ARDEC System Safety Office and other military safety organizations, who determined that Final Hazard Classification for the new 30mm ammunition packaging could remain the same as the former packaging because the changes to the new packaging were minor and would not change the FHC.
Eliminating this unnecessary testing to approve the FHC saved DoD more than half a million dollars.
Picatinny organizations have won five DoD Value Engineering Awards in the past eight years.
Fiscal year 2003 " Organization Award - PEO Ammunition
Fiscal year 2003 - Team Award - M821A1 and M889A1 Mortar Ammunition Team
Fiscal year 2005 - Special Award - ARDEC
Fiscal year 2009 - Special Award - PEO Ammunition
Fiscal year 2010 - Special Award - PEO Ammunition
Military-wide in fiscal year 2010, DoD executed in-house value engineering proposals and accepted contractor-initiated value engineering change proposals with a combined actual and projected savings/cost avoidance in excess of $2.4 billion.
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