Dr. Srinivasan Shares in Prestigious Business Award: Helps Military Increase Revenues $49.8 Million Annually

Mandyam Srinivasan, Ball Corporation Distinguished Professor of Business and internationally renowned expert in lean management, was part of the team that won the prestigious Franz Edelman Award, the “Super Bowl” of business operations research and management sciences. Srinivasan helped the U.S. military generate annual revenue increases valued at $49.8 million by radically streamlining the maintenance and repair process of the Air Force's largest transport plane, the C-5.

The process took only eight months and cost less than $1 million. Working with Srinivasan were Warner Robins Air Logistics Center and software provider Realization Technologies Inc.

Before the team became involved, C-5 repairs took an average of 240 days; Warner Robins Air Logistics Center had up to 13 C-5s — or more than 10 percent of the fleet — under repair at one time. More than $500,000 of potential daily income was sitting idle.

Warner Robins was under significant pressure from the U.S. military to reduce maintenance turnaround time and get more planes flying.

Bill Best, deputy director of an aircraft maintenance group at Warner Robins and graduate of UT’s Aerospace MBA program, partnered with Srinivasan to meet the challenge.  As part of his Aerospace MBA program, Best had worked with Srinivasan to significantly cut costs in another area of the center.

Through the team’s efforts, Warner Robins reduced C-5 turnaround time to 160 days and the average number of C-5s under repair from 13 planes to seven.

The revenue and cost implications are enormous. Five additional, operational planes generate an estimated $49.8 million annually; replacement cost of these planes exceeds $2 billion. The extra workforce capacity generated should bring Warner Robins additional annual revenue of up to $248 million through 2009, and, by having fewer C-5s under repair, 11 dock spaces, worth $220 million, became available for other work.

Srinivasan said reducing the number of aircraft in the repair facility also means maintenance quality has improved.
Ken Percell, Warner Robins’ senior-most civilian noted, "There is another key consequence that we measure not in dollars, but in human lives. The five C-5s returned to the Air Force will immediately reduce dangerous convoy operations in combat areas, saving uncounted lives that might have been lost in these dangerous operations."

With the C-5 success under its belt, Warner Robins is applying this process to reduce work-in-process on the C-130s from 24 down to 15.

Previous Franz Edelman Award Winners – Last 10 Years

2005   General Motors Corp.
2004   Motorola, Inc. with Emptoris Inc.
2003   Canadian Pacific Railroad
2002   Continental Airlines
2001   Merrill Lynch Inc.
2000   Jeppesen Sanderson Inc.
1999   IBM
1998   Bosques Arauco, S.A.
1997   Society Nationale des Chemins der Fer Francais (SNCF) and SABRE Decision Technologies
1996   South African National Defense Force