Non-Disclosure Agreement: I will only disclose non-proprietary information regarding my work at L3Harris. All images are public knowledge.
L3Harris
Mechanical Design & Quality Engineering
At L3Harris, I designed and optimized a component, mid-retainer plate, for pneumatic sonobuoy launch systems. As the current larger American system was being repurposed for European markets, there was a need for mid-retainer plates to facilitate housing and deployment of these smaller sonobuoys. The two existing designs for this part had inconsistent deployment, insufficient exit velocity of the sonobuoys, and allowed drop damage to occur to the buoys. I addressed and improved these issues by providing a working design that in testing, deployed consistently due to a breakaway polycarbonate fastener system. The drop damage was addressed by incorporating multiple materials within the mid-retainer plate thus controlling the deacceleration of internal components when dropped from a standardized test height. The exit velocity of the sonobuoys was improved by 10.6% due to this design’s decreased drag coefficient.
I spearheaded an investigation into how the metrics for supplier ratings were being calculated and updated. There was suspicion that some recorded supplier rankings were higher than accurate due to an unusual increase in defective assemblies across a few systems. I performed a deep dive into this issue and discovered an inconsistency with how some metrics were used in future calculations, particularly DPPM (defective parts per million). I proposed an updated recording and calculation process to management which succeeded in raising the accuracy of supplier rankings by over 1.7% companywide.
