MEMORANDUM

To: George Pfeil, Plant Manager, Romeo Engine Plant
From: Tyler Ledford, Auburn University
Date: February 24, 2015
Subject: Romeo Engine Plant Manufacturing Analysis
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The main objectives of the Romeo Engine Plant’s (REP) manufacturing strategy are to decrease costs through quality control, increasing efficiencies in work processes and automation, and empowering lower level supervisors. The plant manager, George Pfeil, introduced key initiatives that helped foster this strategy into what it has become today. The Romeo Quality Process (RQP) was established to ensure customer expectations were met and was a disciplined approach to total process design and production that would virtually guarantee that customers would get zero defect parts with minimum variations. The primary elements of the RQP were forming teams that functioned as individual business units and were responsible for product and manufacturing engineering, quality, production, systems, and supplier relationships. Target levels were established for each team that reflected customer expectations, and process control methods that are consistent with the nature of the process were established and implemented on the production floor. Romeo was attempting to become lean through decreasing costs and challenging their teams to meet certain standards. The creation of the Life Education Center and the employee education requirements were key in disseminating the goals of the organization to all of it’s members.

The most important of the systems related to the process controls is the Machine Monitoring System (MMS). This system signals when a defective piece has been made or a machine has been stopped, and it also provides codes that tell the engineers and management exactly what the problem is. This system greatly decreases down time and