The challenge: predictable delivery in a highly customized build
A large, vertically integrated naval shipbuilder needed to become a preferred supplier to its government customer: meeting delivery dates, hitting target costs and launching ships on schedule without firefighting.
The environment combined construction and complex fabrication with extreme product mix and customization. There was no ready-made industry playbook for applying Operational Excellence at this scale. Fabrication presented demanding mixed-model and shared-resource flow problems, while more than 5,000 people needed a common way to see flow and act before it broke down.
Engagement at a glance
80%
Reported reduction in assembly lead times.
5,000+ people
A common way to see flow and act on disruption.
Three times daily
Signal cadences connecting pre-outfit, fabrication and warehousing.
What Duggan did: one operating-system design
Duggan designed a company-wide blueprint for the movement of material and information from raw material to completed ship. Clear normal and abnormal flows and standard responses reduced reliance on managers repeatedly deciding what should happen next.
Pre-outfit assembly
Station design, pre-flight readiness and execution standards connected the work to designed build times.
Fabrication
Product families and Guaranteed Turnaround Times (GTTs) were defined for each value stream. Capability analysis and leveling connected fabrication output to what pre-outfit needed and when it needed it.
Warehousing
Dock-to-stock and stock-to-ship GTTs were combined with an early-warning system: visual FIFO lanes, color-coded family signals, and standard work for kitting and shipping.
Education and embedded standard work
Leaders and employees learned the Operational Excellence sequence: design flow, make it visual, establish standard work for normal flow, and define responses to abnormal flow. The shared language supported correction at the source and helped the operating design remain in use.
Implementation: closing the loop across functions
- Pre-outfit, fabrication and warehouse connections: signal cadences three times daily connected the areas in a closed-loop Customer Delivery System.
- Early-warning boards: parts checklists and flow-disruption tracking by unit and station enabled fast containment without waiting for meetings.
- Visual sequencing: product-family signals told the warehouse what to pick and ship next, reducing the need for supervisor-directed scheduling.
Results: dependable flow and enterprise alignment
- Assembly lead times reduced by 80%.
- Fabrication met defined GTTs consistently, stabilizing upstream supply to pre-outfit assembly.
- Material cycles became shorter and more reliable. Dock-to-stock and stock-to-ship GTTs, supported by FIFO flow, reduced handoffs and delays and exposed slippage immediately.
- Many daily oversight meetings were eliminated. Visual controls and standard responses kept flow on time while releasing management capacity for growth.
- The enterprise operated to a shared design. Pre-outfit, fabrication and warehousing were connected to ship-launch dates and cost goals, supporting the preferred-supplier status win.
Why it worked
The operating blueprint came before the tools. Teams first defined normal and abnormal flow and the required responses, then learned how to see and manage that flow.
GTTs replaced scheduling guesses with commitments the operation could meet and verify visually. Shared signals connected supporting departments to the build, making delivery a property of the whole system rather than a series of departmental priorities.