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V o l . X X I N o. I I Ja N ua r y 2 6 , 2 0 1 5 16 those new hires are driven by a need to replace the shipyard's most skilled tradesmen — many with 30 or more years of experience — who are retiring at a rate of 200 to 250 workers per year. It's a trend that's expected to continue for at least the next five years. "It takes about five years for a first-class mechanic to mature to the point where he or she can work inde- pendently," says Harris, a graduate of Maine Maritime Academy whose shipbuilding career began in 1973 as a senior engineer for the Trident ballistic missile sub- marine program at Electric Boat in Groton, Conn. "So it's a major investment by the corporation in training individuals to be shipbuilders." e shipyard's challenge is to reduce the learning curve as quickly as possible, he says, in order to keep production hours at or below the shipyard's past performance standards. At the same time, he adds, the shipyard is making a concerted effort to write down, as much as possible, the "oral tradition" of the most-experienced tradesmen before they retire. "We have a group of people today whose only job is to understand how to incorporate those les- sons learned — not only from past DDG 51s and from the DDG 1000s, not only lessons learned from other shipyards, but also the input we get from our customer, the Navy," Harris says. "It's a question of capturing the thousands of lessons learned in order to make our ships more affordable in the future." A major focus this year, he adds, will be improv- ing the flow of materials to mechanics and other tradesmen by applying "just-in-time" manufactur- ing principles throughout the shipyard. "It's all about process," Harris says. "We just don't have the processes in place yet to make it very affordable to build ships here. We need to make sure the mechanic gets what he needs first thing in the morning, on time, not too early and not too late, so he doesn't have to travel all around the shipyard looking for it. We also don't want to give him six months' of material and tell him to go build it. He'll just look at it and say, 'Where am I going today?'" ose efforts are beginning to pay off, with Harris citing as one example a pipefitter who demonstrated how a two-and-a-half-hour job could be reduced to half an hour simply by using different equipment. "It's hard work," he says. "ere are many many peo- ple here at Bath who are spending long hours trying to plot the way forward so we can perform well on the backlog and help us have a chance to go in and get the future work we want to get. But it will take all of us. It's all going to be done with the team." Outsourcing to reduce costs? Reducing production costs isn't only about winning the Coast Guard's OPC contract in 2016; it very much relates to BIW's future opportunities in the Navy's DDG 51 destroyer program, which ended in 2008 and then restarted in 2010 after the Navy » C o n t i n u e d f ro m P r e v i o u S Pa G e toll free: 866 494 2020 | www.gwi.net Hosted PBX Phone Systems | Hosted File Sharing, Backup and Recovery | Access to New Fiber Networks and more… Leverage your broadband. Imagine the possibilities. Broadband is just the beginning. Save time, save money and say goodbye to costly capital investment by leveraging the broadband you already have. We'll show you how. Jay Wadleigh, president of Local S6 of the Machinists union, says labor supports BIW's efforts to cut costs but doesn't believe outsourcing is the way to do it. P h o t o / Ja m e S m C C a r t h y

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