Stories
First impressions, lasting impacts
Dials joined U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp at the closing session of this year's Tennessee Valley Corridor National Summit. The summit's goal is to encourage regional economic development in the areas of science and technology.
By George E. Dials, President and General Manager — When I arrived in March, BWXT Y‑12 employees gave my wife, Pamela, and me a warm and welcoming reception. More than 2,000 employees introduced themselves and told me where they work and what they do. The employees' commitment to their job was apparent in each handshake and every welcome.
I have since realized that what I saw at the reception is more than commitment to a job: The workers at the Y‑12 National Security Complex are actually stewards for the nation. It's no secret that Y‑12 provides stewardship over the materials for our nation's nuclear weapons. We guard them, we process them, we count them. We protect them from rogue hands and keep them out of natural resources. We are committed to perform these activities with taxpayers' money, so our further responsibility is to carry out our mission in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility and the Uranium Processing Facility will enable the best stewardship possible for these materials.
The work of Y‑12 employees has far-reaching effects, as I am learning. The site's stewardship of nuclear materials extends beyond our nation's borders. As a participant in nonproliferation programs in Turkey, Tanzania, Uganda and 10 other countries, Y‑12 provides refurbished instruments to help secure desirable materials and to increase worker safety in those international nuclear facilities.
As a nation we are constantly being asked to do more with less, and at the Y‑12 National Security Complex we are doing just that. Materials inventories performed with new confirmatory carts are 50 percent more efficient, most line item projects are within budget and schedule (despite ballooning material costs), and operations are moving forward in record time.
Examples of internal stewardship abound. Seventeen Six Sigma black belt process improvement projects (PIPs) are under way, and these PIPs typicaly general significant dollar savings. The 22 black belt PIPs completed in FY 2005 are forecasted to save or avoid costs of more than $64 million over the next few years.
Y-12 impacts the nation in other, non-nuclear ways. For example, site employees collaborated with the Federal Highway Administration for 7 years to develop an award-winning, web-based database that allows transportation specialists nationwide to share information and lessons learned.
Whether it's saving keystrokes for purchasing supplies or solving complex production problems through modeling and simulations, stewardship is foremost at Y‑12. While we're protecting America's future, we're also striving to make it better.