Mach Speed Product Development: Inside the Skunk Works - Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, product development and management strategies - Company Profile

Automotive Manufacturing & Production,  Sept, 2001  by Christopher A. Sawyer

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Of all the organizations established to develop products quickly and creatively, the Lockheed Martin Skunk works probably is the most famous. We wondered how this concern, Founded in 1943, was adapting to 21st century mission requirements, And what we discovered may help your company get a whole lot Faster.

Since its creation in 1943, the Skunk Works, now part of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (Palmdale, California), has grown to three facilities: Burbank, California, Fort Worth, Texas, and Palmdale, California. "Historically," says Gary Ervin, vice president, Advanced Development Programs, "the company's three aeronautics locations competed against one another because they were separate profit and loss centers. But the changing defense picture"- marked by a decrease in both appropriations and programs- "has forced us to rethink the Skunk Works' place in the organization."

That resulted in tearing down the walls between the three locations, as well as those that had built up around the Skunk Works itself. (Sound familiar?) And though the three sites still operate, they have been combined into a single "virtual" organization under the "Advanced Development Programs" (ADP) banner. Within ADP there are two sub-groups: Advanced Systems Concepts and Advanced Design Center. Ervin explains, "The Advanced Systems Concepts group designs the next-generation bomber, fighter, airlifter (cargo aircraft or tanker), or unmanned vehicle. The Advanced Design Center is full of creative people who look at what future defense needs might be, design systems that can satisfy those requirements, and present them to the various government agencies."

The Skunk Works is doing what it has always done (i.e. develop new aircraft concepts for immediate-need and evolving mission situations). It's just doing it more efficiently.

New capabilities include a Product Improvements and Derivatives (PID) group that gives the Skunk Works responsibility for all improvements to, and derivatives of, existing platforms, and works directly with the group responsible for technology development and integration. "This gives us an entree into programs, and allows us to apply new technologies to an F-22 fighter program, C-5 cargo plane program, or whatever," says Ervin. "Conversely, if they have requirements for things like a new capability, they present that challenge to us. It's our job to help them satisfy those requirements by providing the necessary technologies."

Sometimes, that technology already existed within the organization, but getting it out into the open was difficult at best because, as Ervin says, "each program created a silo that kept solutions inside the program's walls." The answer was the creation of the Cross-Product Integration (CPI) unit within the ADP organization. Its assignment is to understand the needs of each program, ferret-out existing solutions and bring them out into the open where they can be shared. "CPI is working very, very well," effuses Ervin. "It has created a 'library' of ideas that has allowed us to get problems solved and answers out to the organization much, much more quickly than ever before." This brings the Skunk Works closer to its original focus of inventing innovative aircraft concepts and sharing its technologies with the rest of the organization, where feasible. The key to making this complex virtual organization work isn't more time on commercial airliners, says Ervin, it's communication. "My travel time is up," he admits , "but it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Each facility has different capabilities, and folding them into one organization meant creating common procedures, using common tools, and speaking a common language." Now most work is accomplished via Internet meetings, video teleconferences, e-mail, and other electronic media.

"We use the same set of electronic databases at all three sites," says Ervin. "And most of the time our suppliers are part of the same database structure. So we send the files back and forth electronically, and the suppliers build the parts and ship them to us without ever having to make prototypes. The concept is the same whether we are dealing with ourselves or our suppliers. Integrated electronic tools are key to opening the lines of communication."

Those tools, however, aren't proprietary. "We use CATIA as a design tool, and that capability was developed with Boeing when we worked together on the YF-22 fighter program," says Ervin. "It made it possible for us to work collaboratively and hurry the process along significantly." Which begs the question: If Boeing uses the same tools as Lockheed Martin--and has its own Skunk Works in the form of Phantom Works, acquired when Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas--what makes the Skunk Works different from its competition?

"There are two major things," says Ervin. "First, we look for people with a 'can-do' attitude. People who are free thinkers, creative, and don't let conventional boundaries get in their way. Second," he adds almost off-handedly, "we don't have a standard set of management tools for every situation. We tailor and adapt them to the program. A small, 'black' [covert] program has very different requirements from a large, commercial program," he continues. "We tailor what we do to whatever is appropriate to the program we are working on. It never pays to get lost in the process."