CENTER FOR

QUALITY OF MANAGEMENT
JOURNAL

REPRINT NUMBER:

RP00200

From the Chairman of the Editorial Committee

David Walden, Senior Vice President, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.

Page 2

What is the Center for Quality Management?

Tom Lee, President, Center for Quality Management
and David Walden, Senior Vice President, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.

Page 3

Goal Deployment at Varian Crossed Field

and Receiver Protector Products
Page 9
Dennis Gleason, Vice President and General Manager,
Crossed Field & Receiver Protector Products Business Unit, Varian Associates

JIT II: A New Approach to Supply Management

Lance Dixon, Director of Purchasing and Logistics, Bose Corporation

Page 15

BBN's 7-Steps Implementation

Cliff Scott, Senior Consultant, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.

Page 19

7-Steps to Reducing New Product Time-to-Market

Dennis Buss, Vice President of Technology, Analog Devices Inc.

Page 28

Operationally Defining Metrics

for the Product Development Process
Metrics Subcommittee of the Center for Quality Management

Page 34

Other CQM Research on the Product Development Process

Page 47

Volume 1, Number 1

Autumn 1992

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of their articles.
Autumn
1992
ISSN: 1072-5296

Goal Deployment
at Varian Crossed Field
and Receiver Protector Products
Dennis Gleason
Varian

The "Goal
Deployment"
process at this
business unit is
effectively uniting
the efforts of the
whole organization
to solve key
problems.

This paper describes the implementation of a

goal deployment process at the Varian Crossed
Field and Receiver Protector Products (CF&RPP)
Business Unit, located in Beverly, Massachusetts.
This process serves to communicate to all work
groups what needs to be improved. It provides
some structure to the continuous improvement process and helps to ensure that all work group efforts
are aligned towards the same overall goals. There
are approximately 80 work groups in the Business
Unit. The goal deployment process has significantly improved the ability to mobilize all of the
resources of the Business Unit for continuous improvement.

Corporate Background
Varian Associates, Inc., is a diversified international electronics company whose major product
lines include radiation equipment for cancer therapy
and industrial inspection; analytical instruments
for science and industry, wafer fabrication equipment for the semiconductor industry; electron tubes
for communication, radar, electronic countermeasures, science, medicine and industrial uses; and
vacuum equipment and leak detectors for industrial
and scientific processes. The company embarked
on a formal corporate-wide continuous improvement process in 1986. This process included the
development of a corporate-wide training course
on Quality Improvement which was delivered to all
employees over the course of the next several
years. Results from the early phases of the process
were mixed, with excellent improvements occurring in some arenas and some level of difficulty
experienced getting started in others. By 1990,
this continuous improvement thrust had evolved to
the Five Point Operational Excellence Strategy that
has focused the companys improvement efforts
through the present time. These five points are: a

customer focus in all we do; an unbending commitment to quality; excellence in time to market;
flexible, responsive factories; and organizational
excellence, providing the structure and work force
to deliver the best net customer value.

Continuous Improvement at CF&RPP

Varian CF&RPP serves the world-wide radar,
electronic warfare, and scientific markets. Principal product lines include magnetrons, crossed field
amplifiers, traveling wave tubes, receiver protectors, and associated modulator equipment. The
formal continuous improvement process began here
in phase with the corporate initiative. CF&RPP
recognized that a key to long term success would be
the mobilization of each of its work groups to
define and achieve improvement in its own work
process. In 1989, a major focus was placed on
defining a measure of improvement for each work
group in the operation.
A few measurement rules were established
as follows:

Each work group should select at least

one metric which it would target for
improvement.

This item would be a measure of the

quality of the work groups work
output (that is, an internal measure).

The item should be relatively easy to

measure (the cost of measurement
should not exceed the benefit of
improvement).

The item selected had to be improvable. If a selected measure was

already operating at zero defects
level of performance, then another
measure should be selected.

Autumn 1992 9

Dennis Gleason is
Vice President and
General Manager
of Varians
Crossed Field &
Receiver Protector
Products business
unit. The products
the unit produces
are critical
elements in radar,
electronic
countermeasures,
and airborne,
missile, and
transponder
applications. Mr.
Gleason received
Bachelors and
Masters degrees
in Aerospace
Engineering from
the University of
Notre Dame. He
also served as a
Lieutenant in the
U.S. Navy Nuclear
Submarine Force.

The item selected needed to be significant. The definition of significant was left somewhat vague, but
the general interpretation was that the
work group would be willing to make
a case that improving this measure
was relevant to overall Business Unit
objectives.

Measurements status was reported monthly (at

a minimum) and, in general, measurements were
posted in work areas throughout the facility. The
measurement process was linked to a recognition
process which recognized work groups that achieved
25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% improvements from
their performance base line. Some number of
successes were achieved and a significant fraction
of the work force (near 40%) achieved at least a
25% improvement in performance.
Motivation for our Goal Deployment Process
As time progressed, however, diagnosis of the
process indicated a lack of connectedness. That
is, while many issues were being addressed, it was
difficult (for both insiders and outsiders) to determine if the improvement effort was focused on the

Business Unit's top level goals. In a number of

areas, a sense that there was too much to do, and a
concern that there were too many initiatives or
priorities developed. Some work groups lacked a
sense that their improvement was important.
Some of the initial goals were achieved while other
improvement efforts began to experience frustration. Thus, the need for a what should we work
on? guideline began to emerge. The overall deficiency was termed a lack of alignment and efforts began to devise a way to address it.
Following a management review of the needs
of the operation and its overall improvement status
in 1990, the Goal Deployment process was developed to address this lack of alignment. Soon
thereafter, the CF&RPP senior management team
attended a lecture at which the subject of policy
deployment was introduced.1 In this presentation,
policy deployment was shown to utilize matrices
as a method of organizing the actions needed to
achieve established objectives and deploying those
actions and objectives through the organization.
1

Policy Deployment is an English name for Hoshin Kanri, the

Japanese system for aligning the activities of all levels and all parts
of the company in pursuit of key company goals; other English
translations for Hoshin Kanri are Management by Policy, Hoshin
Planning, and Hoshin Management.

Customer
Visit
Feedback
Employee
Survey
Baldrige
Criteria
Assessment

Annual
Strategic
Planning
Meeting

Business
Unit
Strategic
Plan

Statement
of
Objectives

Market
Assessment
Results-toDate
Review

Task Team
Assignment and
Goal Definition
Continuous
Improvement
Needs

Continuous
Improvement
Task Tree
Business Unit
Goal Definition

to Figure 2

Figure 1: Goal Development Process

Autumn 1992 10

from Figure 1

CF&RPP
Business Unit
Goal
Definition

Figure 2: Goal Deployment Process

General Manager's
Goal Deployment
Statement

Feedback

Functional
Department
Goal Deployment

Implementation of this form of policy deployment would require displaying all of the actions
(the means, or the "how) needed to accomplish
the objective (ends, or the whats), and regularly updating these displays to show status of
action. While the CF&RPP management team
felt that the concept was good, the bureaucracy
and paperwork that could have ensued if the
implementation was not expertly managed discouraged us from fully adopting the concept.
The use of the matrix diagram as a planning
and communication tool did, however, seem to
have significant merit. By simplifying the method
so that only the goals or what we need to work
on" were deployed, we felt that the undesirable
bureaucracy could be avoided.
Goal Development Process
Figure 1 depicts the goal development portion of our process, and Figure 2 depicts the
deployment of these goals through the organization. This flow has evolved over the past two
years and, like most initial implementations, did
not get initiated in as smooth a manner as the
figure suggests. The process begins with an
assessment of the needs of the Business Unit. To
ensure that these needs have customer focus, the
initial step includes a customer survey and visit
to a major customer by each member of the
senior management team to listen to the voice
of the customer. In addition to this direct
customer feedback, the results achieved in ongoing continuous improvement efforts are reviewed,
as are the status of the Business Units overall
progress against the template provided by the

Feedback

Work Group
Goal
Deployment

Measurement

Goal
Alignment
Review

"Results-to-Date"
Review

back to Figure 1
for next cycle

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Assessment (Baldrige Criteria Assessment), input
from employee surveys, and market assessments.
With this input, the senior management team, in
an annual strategic planning meeting, updates
the Business Unit strategic plan and arrives at a
statement of overall objectives. These objectives will then form the rows in a CF&RPP
Business Unit Goal Deployment schedule (see
Figure 3). These objectives reflect the key methods of providing customer satisfaction and
achieving business success.
Autumn 1992 11

Once the objectives are set, the development of

specific goals begins. Careful attention is paid to
define goals which are measurable and achievable
in a short (one year) time frame. This development
of goals includes the definition of significant continuous improvement needs and the assignment of
cross functional task teams to address them. In this
process, the Five Point Operational Excellence
Strategy forms the upper tier of a tree diagram
which is then broken down into specific task team
assignments (see Figure 4 for an example). The
previously defined objectives and an assessment of
current performance against benchmarks are considered, as are resources available, in assigning
these task teams. With the tasks assigned, and in
light of the objectives, the specific, measurable
goals to be accomplished in the next year are then
detailed. In this process, brainstorming is used to
identify potential tasks/goals and a multi-voting
method is used to reduce them to a manageable
number. There remains valid internal debate over
whether the current set of 27 goals is actually
manageable. This process is conducted in parallel with the definition of the Annual Operating Plan
and Budget. In practice, the needs assessment,
strategic plan definition, and objectives definition
has taken the senior management team about a day
and a half to complete. The improvement task team
definition and Business Unit goal definition takes
about another day.
The goals form the columns of the CF&RPP
Business Unit Goal Deployment Schedule (Figure
3). Check marks are used to show which goals
apply to which objectives and a review ensures that
achievement of the stated goals will lead to fulfillment of the objectives. This review is fairly subjective, but so far has resulted in a consensus that the
goals stated were appropriate. With the goals
defined and displayed on the CF&RPP Business
Unit Goal Deployment Schedule, the goal deployment part of the process is ready to begin (Figure
2).

Description of the Goal Deployment Process

The CF&RPP Business Unit Goal Deployment
Schedule is distributed to all departments (Figure
2). It is accompanied by the General Managers
goal deployment statement which briefly summarizes performance in the past period and highlights
the focus/theme for the upcoming year. Functional
departments then set their goals which will result in
the achievement of the Busi-ness Unit goals, and
display them on a functional department goal de-

Figure 3: Goal Deployment Schedule

CF&RPP Business Unit

Goal Deployment Schedule
Bus.
Reduce
Unit
Cycle Time
Goal Goal #1 to <140 Goal #3
Obj
Days
.
Obj. #1
Be the
Low Cost
Producer

Etc.

Obj. #3

Etc.

ployment schedule (Figure 3). This schedule has

the Business Unit goals as its rows and functional
department goals as it columns. A feedback loop is
present to allow for a process to revise goals as
appropriate. The functional department goals are
then deployed to the work groups (Figure 2), who
prepare a work group deployment schedule (Figure
3). To keep Figure 3 simple, the deployment of
only one goal is shown (only one check mark) in
each deployment schedule matrix; in reality, there
would likely be more.
Note that the units on the goal may change
from level to level as a work group determines how
it will continue to the functional goals. In the
example, the purchasing work group is contributing to a cycle time reduction by establishing Value
Managed Relationships (VMRs) with suppliers.
(VMR is the term Varian uses for a long term
partnering process with suppliers.) The concept
of unit change is important, as it encourages each
work group to think about how it can best contribute to the achievement of the goal, rather than focus
only on how to create a measurement similar to the
one expressed in the next level up goal.
At the conclusion of the process, a goal
alignment review is conducted. This attempts to
answer the questions:
Autumn 1992 12

If the work groups achieve their goals,

will the department goals be met?

If the departments meet their goals, will

the Business Unit goals be met?

If the Business Unit meets its goals, will

the objectives be met?

In practice, this alignment review has proven to

be easier for some goals than others. Cycle time
goals tend to deploy well, and with work group
functions mapped on a flow chart, can be added to
see if the overall goal will be met. Goals relating to
items such as employee empowerment tend to
become highly subjective in the alignment review.
As before, some amount of catchball occurs and
goals are revised as appropriate.
With the goals deployed, the measurement
process begins which provides status through the
improvement process, documents the results, and
serves as an input to the next goal development
cycle.
The key question is, How well does it work?
Work groups at CF&RPP have utilized the process

A Functional Department
Goal Deployment Schedule
Dept.
Goal

Reduce
Vendor Lead
Bus.
Goal #1 Goal #2 Time to 60 Etc.
Unit Goal
days

Goal #1
Reduce
cycle time
to <140
days

Goal #3
Etc.

A Work Group Goal

Deployment Schedule
W.G.
Estab. VMRs
Goal
for 75% of
Goal #1 Prod. Parts Goal #3 Etc.
Funct.
Dept. Goal
Goal #1
Goal #2
Reduce
Vendor
Lead Time
to 60 days

Etc.

Autumn 1992 13

to understand and explain the significance of their

efforts, and to set priorities. This has resulted in
greatly improving the sense of connectedness,
and the feeling that efforts were being extended on
important things. There is, however, significant
room for improvement. To some extent, we still
experience a sense of trying to do too much,
which may be due to the failure to reduce the
number of Business Unit goals below 27. This is
the principle item which we plan to improve in the
process as we move forward. Overall, we believe
that we are far better off now than before we started
using goal deployment, and plan to continue to
utilize it as the connecting force in our continuous improvement efforts.

Total
Quality
Management

{
{

Operational
Excellence
Framework

Customer
Focus

Tasks

Task Team 1
etc.

Commitment
to
Quality

Fast
Flexible
Markets

Supplier
Management
Team

Demand
Flow
Technology
Team

Time
to
Market

Organizational
Excellence

Product
Cost
Reduction
Team

Figure 4: Example of Continuous Improvement Task Tree Diagram

Autumn 1992 14

Journal On-Line

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