I'm proud of Newt for knowing about Six Sigma.
The military might be able to save a lot of dough by making sure everybody had the same kind of radio/bullet/jeep, whatever. It has its limitations, though. For example, jet fighters that the Navy needs are materially different from what the Air Force needs because they have to land on carriers.
Back in the 70s the Army switched from .45 ACP pistols on the Colt 1911 frame to a 9mm design created by the oldest firearm company in the world, Beretta. The 9mm is a much more universal caliber, but now many units are going back to the .45 to get the performance that it offers.
Military procurement should have deep involvement of people who are knowledgeable in the intended function of the materiel being procured, not accountants or any kind of desk jockey.
Years ago I did what my employer called "Value Analysis." I led a small group who traveled to projects that might benefit from doing things differently. It was an engineering strategy/method that did not transfer well to the biological process of growing trees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_sigma
Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola, USA in 1986.[1][2] As of 2010, it is widely used in many sectors of industry.
Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes.[3] It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts", "Green Belts", etc.) who are experts in these methods.[3] Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction and/or profit increase).[3]
The term Six Sigma originated from terminology associated with manufacturing, specifically terms associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield, or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a byword for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it."
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