TOBYHANNA ARMY DEPOT, Pa., 16 Oct. 2006. Officials of the U.S. Office of Naval Research's Best Manufacturing Practices Center of Excellence (BMPCOE) is awarding the organization's 2006 Best Manufacturing Practices Excellence Award to Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pa.
The BMPCOE works with the University of Maryland and the U.S. Department of Commerce to help companies identify, research, and promote exceptional manufacturing practices, methods, and procedures.
"The BMPCOE conducted a survey at Tobyhanna July 10-14; four survey teams focused on design, test, production, facilities, logistics, and management processes," says Dr. James Meyl, Tobyhanna's Total Army Quality administrator. "BMP Survey Teams surveyed 41 processes. Twenty five of the 41 were identified as best practices and 16 were identified as Information Items with the potential to become best practices."
Tobyhanna Army Depot is the U.S. Department of Defense's largest center for the repair, overhaul and fabrication of a wide variety of electronics systems and components, from tactical field radios to the ground terminals for the defense satellite communications network. Tobyhanna's missions support all branches of the Armed Forces.
About 4,400 personnel are employed at Tobyhanna, which is located in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania.
"The award shows our customers and potential customers that our business processes are as good as or better than the leading manufacturers," Meyl says. "It's also great visibility for Tobyhanna because BMP sends out information on the organizations it surveys and publishes results on its Web site. The BMP Web site receives up to 70,000 hits per day. This provides national recognition for the depot."
The Navy established the BMP in 1985 to establish a way to document processes, techniques or innovative uses of equipment or resources that have proven records of success in providing significant improvement in cost, schedule, quality, performance, safety, environment or other measurable factors which impact the health of an organization. The program was expanded to the entire U.S. industrial base in 1990.
Tobyhanna Army Depot is part of the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command (C-E LCMC). Headquartered at Fort Monmouth, N.J., C-E LCMC's mission is to research, develop, acquire, field and sustain communications, command, control computer, intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors capabilities for the Armed Forces.
For more information contact Tobyhanna online at www.tobyhanna.army.mil.
