2017 Issue

67 SALT LAKE STORE 612 Confluence Ave Murray UT 84123 (801)262-0066 Sales, Service Supplies and Rental www.rmtlaser.com (801)262-0066 Rocky Mountain Transit has been serving Utah and Nevada for over 25 years. We are a full line Topcon Machine Control and Survey Dealer. We also proudly represent products from Spectra Precision, Leica, Seco, PLS, Aervoe and many more. From flagging and paint to Machine Control and 3D Laser Scanning, our Professional Sales staff has you covered! the status quo, and bring new ideas to what can easily be- come a stale set of ideals. The right combination of peo- ple brings out the best in everything we do and facilitates the transfer of knowledge to a new generation of future leaders in industry. Infrastructure Also Key As important as the human factor is, an infrastructure must also exist to ensure that collaborative processes take place, that decisions – and reasons behind those decisions – are documented, and that the vast knowledge of our workforce is captured and passed on. This includes having value-add- ed procedures directing what to do, easy-to-use standard work explaining how to do it, and educational training to explain why it’s important. This infrastructure is vital to mak- ing continuous improvement a part of our culture, which is necessary to ensure controlled innovation, making new products and services without losing the technical excel- lence and reliability for which we are known. With the people and culture in place, building the future just needs a well-suited continuous improvement process. Given the major focus on leveraging past successes, simply identifying your current condition and allowing your team to define a target state provides an easy model to identify the actions necessary to get from where you are to where you wish to be. Following through on those actions is not easy, but successful execution of them allows you to reach heights previously unobtainable. At Orbital ATK, improving on our successes, failures, and overall history in aerospace is certainly a challenge, but it’s a challenge we gladly accept. But we don’t accept it simply for the exhilaration of victory, be it winning contracts and gaining profits. We do it for pride. Pride in our nation’s leadership in space, pride in the space flight industry, and pride in doing things nobody else has ever done. But in the end, having pride in what you do is a victory in of itself. Earl Benson is an Engineering Manager at Orbital ATK, responsible for Quality Engineering work on the production of the Space Launch System (SLS) nozzle as well as full-scale motor testing. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. He lives with his wife, Rachel, and two children, Hailey and Taylor, in Utah.