Textron Online Annual Report

Harnessing the power of an $11 billion enterprise
As promised, we deployed Textron Six Sigma across the company in 2002. Textron Six Sigma is a proven set of tools and processes aimed at reducing variability, eliminating waste and developing products and services that are precisely aligned with customer needs.

The certified, full-time leaders of Textron Six Sigma projects are called “Black Belts.” In less than a year, we trained over 225 Black Belts who completed more than 100 projects. Based on savings generated by these projects, we have already recovered our initial investment in deploying Textron Six Sigma. This was an industry-leading Six Sigma launch, by any measure.

This is just the beginning. We expect to have trained nearly 500 Black Belts by the end of 2003. And hundreds more of our people – including me – will acquire the skills of Textron Six Sigma through Green Belt training. This growing force of Green Belts supports our Black Belt projects and brings the results-driven mindset of Textron Six Sigma to thousands of additional projects across the enterprise.

Having focused most of our projects on eliminating waste and reducing variability, we are now implementing the third element of Textron Six Sigma, called Design for Six Sigma. This will help us drive innovation and growth by dramatically improving the way we design products, services and processes. We know that our success begins and ends with customers. This discipline provides a better way to pinpoint true customer requirements and deliver solutions that will win in the marketplace.

Likewise, our Supply Chain Management Initiative is establishing common processes that help us deliver products more quickly and cost-effectively. We are honing our competitive edge by leveraging our purchasing power, engaging in global sourcing and other best practices. In 2003 we will intensify our supply chain efforts in two main areas: strategic sourcing and manufacturing productivity.

We also established Textron Information Services as our first enterprise shared services organization. This enables major reduction in our overall IT costs, while providing a solid platform for developing common enterprise systems.