Lessons learned in TRU waste process improvement at LANL

Typical papers that discuss lessons learned or quality improvement focus on the challenge for a production facility reaching six sigma (3.4 Defects Per Million Opportunities) from five sigma. This paper discusses lessons learned when the Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) transuranic (TRU) waste management project was challenged to establish a production system to meet the customer's expectations. The target for FY 2003 was set as two shipments of TRU waste per week leaving the site. The average for the four previous years (FY99-02) was about one shipment every two months. LANL recognized that, despite its success in 1999 as the first site to ship TRU waste to open the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), significant changes to the way business was being done were required to move to a production mode. Process improvements began in earnest in April 2002. This paper discusses several of the initiatives LANL took to achieve forty-five shipments in FY03. The paper is organized by topic into five major areas that LANL worked to get the job done.