Houston, We Don’t Have a Problem!

NASA Resolves Problems on the Fast Track

From Early Gemini, Apollo and Skylab projects to today’s International Space Station and Space Shuttle programs, Johnson Space Center (JSC) continues to lead NASA’s effort in human space exploration. JSC boasts over 15,000 employees and utilizes a healthy chunk of the 16.4 billion dollar total NASA budget making it one of the largest employers in Texas.

To fulfill the mission of NASA, JSC was arranged like a college campus with beautiful, well maintained buildings and grounds. It takes a huge effort to keep the physical facilities running to meet day to day operations. To keep things running in tip-top shape, NASA had setup an outside contractor to respond to maintenance problems around the JSC campus. These problems could be anything from electrical to plumbing. Problems might require as little as one person and screw driver to a crew and a track hoe. The contract stated that to achieve the maximum financial benefit the contractor would be required to meet specified response and problem resolution targets. For the past 21 years the contractor was unable to meet the stringent objectives set by NASA.

To help the contractor achieve the target, NASA used ProcessModel to create a simulation model of the Small Problem Resolution process. See figure 1.

Figure 1 - Small Problem Resolution Process

In less than 4 hours an animated simulation model was built showing the critical elements that needed to be solved to allow the process to meet original requirements. The fascinating part of the project was that only three things needed to change for the process to achieve its goals. However, any one of the three things changed independently would have had no overall effect. See figure 2 for the most important process steps in driving down overall response time.

Figure 2 - Important Process Steps

Armed with the knowledge of the critical areas of the process that needed to change, the Small Problem Resolution Manager walked out of the presentation and implemented the changes. Now for the first time in 21 years this process is in the “Green.” NASA is receiving the response needed to keep things running smoothly around JSC and the contractor is thrilled by the increase in revenue.

NASA is an excellent example of how a process model can be built quickly and effectively to solve difficult problems.