Out of darkness: my internship experience

I’ve gone dark the past few months – I have no real excuse, but my radio silence happened to roughly correspond with my internship start date, so we’ll go with that explanation.

My internship project is to figure out how to best reduce energy waste in the manufacturing process.  I am following on to the work done by Mike Norelli, an on-cycle LGO ’10 who wrapped up in December. Since January, I’ve been located at Raytheon in Andover, MA, at the Integrated Air Defense Center (IADC). This plant is best known for manufacturing the majority of Patriot Missile System (the erstwhile “Scudbusters” from Operation Desert Storm), but they also make components for a variety of other advanced radar systems.

The Patriot Missile System

The IADC has about 4,400 (largely unionized) employees, and has a footprint of 1.2 million square feet. The plant includes a mix of offices, production areas,  kitchens, and server rooms. Moreover, they make everything from circuit cards to giant radar systems installed on Navy vessels. From Mike Norelli’s thesis:

The IADC had an annual electricity consumption of approximately 57,574 MWhs in 2009, which is the equivalent amount of electrical energy used by 5,126 average American homes. The IADC’s peak power during this was 11,410 kW, occurring in mid August. Since the IADC is such a large energy user, it negotiates its rates directly with its electricity provider. Its approximate annual electricity bill is $9 million.

Following on to Mike’s project was great because he already had built a network of people who were familiar with the project and I could essentially hit the ground running. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I didn’t struggle with defining my project for about 2 months. Although I will graduate with a degree in Electrical Engineering, I really didn’t know the first thing about electricity. I never got that light bulb to light up in Physics lab in high school. I had to have somebody explain to me the difference between a Kilowatt (power) and Kilowatt-hour (energy)  - the former is a rate, the latter is cumulative:  like speed versus total distance traveled in your car.  I also had no idea how much energy an oven used versus a laptop versus a soldering iron (or even how to spell “soldering”). And then there’s real power versus apparent power, power factors, inductive loads versus resistive loads, 3 phase versus single phase…

I still don't really get it

The funny thing is, I found a similar level of ignorance throughout the facility, including those in management who have been tasked to somehow reduce the use of energy in their departments. A big part of my project is simply mapping out, as best as we can, how much energy each piece of equipment in a particular department uses under the theory that you can’t control what you can’t measure.

As I’m writing this post, I’m realizing that I have learned so much about energy in my 4 months there – I really owe Raytheon a major debt because I think what I ultimately give the company will be far less than what I’ve taken from them in terms of my own education. I think I’ll start a series of Sunday posts about what I’ve learned so far about energy use in a manufacturing facility – maybe my perspective of ignorance will help teach others who are coming from the same perspective, that’s kind of why I started this blog in the first place.  I’m still no expert, but you have to start somewhere.

I’ve also learned a lot about how to work, collaborate and lead in a production environment.  My previous jobs were in a start-up and in a research lab – neither of which could be classified as production. I’ve also generally worked sitting at a desk with a computer, whereas about half of my time now is spent on the floor with people. So there have been some interesting work-related personal challenges for me at Raytheon:

• Leadership: The majority of the workforce at IADC, and particularly those I have been working with, have all been much older than me, generally in their late 40′s and 50′s. I was wondering if I could lead effectively in this situation. One piece of advice given to me is if somebody is old enough to be your parent, then they expect you to treat them like that. Another way of putting it is: don’t be a brat. Good parents want to support their kids, and maybe because of that I have gotten great support from pretty much everybody at the facility in that age group. In fact, I would say I have gotten better support from them than from some of my peers closer to my age!
• Culture: If working in a startup was chaos, and working in a research lab was pretty smooth and controlled, I would say that working in a production environment, to be a bit pithy, is controlled chaos. As an example, at one point, I concocted a data collection plan that had a schedule down to the minute over the course of a month. The first day on the floor, that schedule was scrapped. Now I try to plan a day in advance, but often times I simply adjust on the fly. That’s been really good practice for me.
• Operations: A major challenge for me at IADC has been the fact that they are a “high-mix, low volume” operation. A lot of the specific Lean techniques (single piece flow, point of use supplies etc) which we have learned in class, which had been my only real exposure to operations, seem to work best on “low-mix, high volume” production. On top of this is the fact that the processes are highly regulated by the customer, with very rigorous quality requirements for every product. The end result of this situation is a high level of variability in day-to-day operations, low predictability, and a constant fear of unintentionally screwing something up because of the complexity of the system. As a result, I have reduced the problem to something manageable in six months, by either looking at a single value stream end-to-end, or concentrating on a single type of floor equipment such as vacuum ovens. The key thing I have learned from my work is that to reduce energy waste, flexibility is critical, which I think is a lesson applicable in any other product mix or operational environment.
• Workforce: On the other hand, some challenges I thought would be difficult have turned out to not be. For instance, I think the challenges resulting from a union environment is a bit overblown. Sure, at first it was a little annoying that there are contract negotiated breaks during the day, but they’re always at the same times, so you can plan around them. It’s kind of like what batters and pitchers say about homeplate umps – as long as they’re consistent, players don’t have any problem with them. What’s more important is that employees are engaged, helpful, and willing to change. On that score, I’ve had attitudes run the gamut from subdued hostility to indifferent resignation to enthusiastic support – but in no different proportion than when I speak to managers and engineers. I’m sure it can be tough in other places, but for me at least, it hasn’t been an issue.
  

  My view of the upcoming union contract negotiations (how can you have a picture of an umpire without Bobby Cox?)

• Waking up early: This has been the most difficult part for me. First shift at IADC starts at 6 AM, and it’s a 40 minute drive from Watertown. Some people I work with on first shift get there at 5! I think the earliest I’ve made it there has been 7, but generally I get there at 8 so I miss a good 2-3 hour chunk. Fortunately, it hasn’t really been a major problem for me because I need to work with second shift as well and I’m not exactly responsible for anything, but I have massive respect for the people who do it every day.
  

  Yeah, that's pretty much me every morning.

  My thesis will go into detail on a lot of the specifics in engineering and management around the project. But suffice it to say it has been a great learning experience so far, and I just hope that I can figure out a way in the next couple months to sustain and spread the approach I’ve developed which should result in some big energy savings throughout the facility.