U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Deputy to the Commanding General Donald Nitti was the keynote speaker at the annual Value Engineering-Army Working Capital Fund Investment Program awards ceremony held March 7 on Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.
Value engineering is a methodology that uses a function-analysis approach to get the optimum solution for the lowest amount of life-cycle resources. Teams from throughout Redstone Arsenal worked together to seek solutions for cost, obsolescence, and reliability drivers adversely impacting the readiness of aviation and missile weapons systems, or affecting the Soldiers, organizations and processes that sustain them. The AWCF is a revolving fund used to procure spare and repair parts for Army weapons systems. The fund sets aside money each year to finance projects to fix issues with spare and repair parts focusing on obsolescence mitigation, reliability improvement and/or cost reduction.
During fiscal year 2022, 10 organizations from throughout Redstone Arsenal completed 78 value engineering projects and six AWCF improvement projects. Members from each of those teams received awards during the ceremony to recognize their efforts.
“Those 78 projects resulted in a cost savings or cost avoidance to the Army of $213 million and collectively as a group, Team Redstone exceeded the FY22 goal for value engineering by $83 million,” Nitti said. “That is significant.”
Plaques were presented to directors and program managers of the following organizations that exceeded their value engineering savings goal for FY22: AMCOM Logistics Center, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center, Integrated Fires Mission Command Project Office, Strategic and Operational Rockets and Missiles Project Office, Targets and Countermeasures Program Office, and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Project Office.
Certificates were presented to the following value engineering coordinators for their respective organizations’ participation and contribution toward the Team Redstone FY22 value engineering program: Jeffrey Jenkins, ALC; Patrick Kelley, DEVCOM AvMC; Tom Nguyen, IFMC Project Office; Alvin Gracie, STORM Project Office; Michael Kryzak, TC Program Office; and Toni Hamilton-Datcher, THAAD Project Office.
AWCF Investment Program certificates were presented to these key Team Redstone personnel for their significant contributions implementing obsolescence mitigation projects in FY22: Tim White, Aviation Ground Support Equipment Product Directorate; Crystal Malone, IFMC Project Office; Lisa Alexander, Short and Intermediate Effectors for Layered Defense Project Office and Nolan Tallman, Utility Helicopters Project Office.
Tom Reynolds, the value engineering and life cycle cost reduction manager for DEVCOM AvMC, said while there were 10 organizations that completed projects, hundreds of individuals participated on those teams, and he appreciates everyone’s efforts. Noting that while the cost savings is tremendous, there are many other benefits of conducting value engineering projects.
He said, “Our measuring stick is how much money we save — that’s the common denominator, but there are many other resources that are also saved, and there are other benefits to the Soldier, such as improved processes and efficiencies. Value engineering is not something that people have to do; it is something they choose to do and because they do get so much return on investment, we want to recognize the people that choose to do it.”
Nitti echoed Reynolds during his remarks, telling the crowd that while the $213 million saved is important and that money can now be realigned to other areas, the true value of value engineering is improved readiness and combating obsolescence.
“It’s about improving reliability across the components so that we have better readiness for our Army,” he said. “We talk about dollars because it’s easy to measure; it’s not easy to determine how a project either directly or indirectly improved readiness for the Army, but we all know intuitively that the efforts across Team Redstone and that $213 million cost avoidance really ultimately ended up in improved readiness and improved capability for our Army.
“Value engineering is a very important program and as we move into the future, it’s going to become more and more challenging to maintain and sustain our enduring fleets,” Nitti said. “There is a growing issue with obsolescence that we have to address and we are going to have to work better, smarter and more efficiently in how we operate, and value engineering is going to be critical to that, so I commend you for your accomplishments in FY22 and I challenge you to keep it up, because value engineering is significantly important and it’s going to be of utmost value to us in the future.”
To view photos from the ceremony, visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/amcompao/albums/72177720306544939
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