Photo By Troy Miller | Mid-Atlantic Region Calibration Center’s Instrument Mechanic Jesse Beard works on a...... read more read more
The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is currently on its maiden voyage, conducting a scheduled deployment in U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. Sixth Fleet area of operations, demonstrating the commitment and power of the Navy’s globally deployed force. As with any deployment for U.S. Navy vessels, it takes a magnitude of teamwork spreading across multiple entities within the Navy to make sure that ships and submarines are at their full potential to carry out the mission.
“Gerald R. Ford and Virginia class submarines represent significant technological improvements over previous classes of ships,” said Mid-Atlantic Region Calibration Center (MARCC) Director Mark Brown. “This increases the complexity of the calibration requirements performed. It requires us to do new work with newer methods and procedures on new test equipment, all of which were first in class.”
When Ford returned from its final workups before deployment, the synergy between MARCC’s 108 Sailors and 48 civilians made it one solid and well performing unit, according to Brown.
“It is a Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) goal to have a 14 business day turnaround time,” said Brown. “MARCC not only met that goal, but surpassed it by having all of the Ford’s high priority jobs completed in approximately ten days, four days early. We are the largest calibration center in the U.S. Navy and yet feedback has been that NNSY has the overall fastest turnaround time between all four shipyards.”
MARCC’s General Purpose Electronic Test Equipment Shop, (Shop 256) Electronics Technician Second Class Evan Hurley added, “We all have our own specialty that we are good at. We use each other’s talents and gifts to work together to knock out the jobs on time and right the first time, so no time is wasted on rework.”
MARCC has a first time rate of 96 percent. In October 2022, the first time rate was at 92 percent. With a volume of approximately 40,000 individual calibrations MARCC works on each year, four percent is significant. What did it take to improve the first time rate?
“MARCC’s Deputy Director, Lt. Cmdr. Julian Wilson, MARCC’s Senior Enlisted Advisor, Senior Chief Electronics Technician Francis Medina and myself know we do not have all the answers,” said Brown. “Our goal is to make well thought, data driven directions. To help achieve this, we went to our team from the most senior civilian to the lowest ranking Sailor and we listened to what they had to say on how to increase our efficiency, quality and turnaround time. We took those suggestions for action and the results were phenomenal.”
Brown continued, “We ensured that every civilian and Sailor has a buy in. We handed them ownership and they took it for action at full speed. We take risks as a team, we fail as a team, we learn from our failures as a team, and because of this, we accomplish great things as a team.”
Mid-Atlantic Region Calibration Center is currently hiring. If this sounds like a team you want to be a part of, go to https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Home/Shipyards/Norfolk/Careers.aspx for more information.
| Date Taken: | 08.08.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 08.07.2023 13:03 |
| Story ID: | 450846 |
| Location: | PORTSMOUTH, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 136 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Mid-Atlantic Region Calibration Center Completes Turnaround Time by Four Days Early, by Troy Miller, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
