Boeing Rocketdyne has several success stories where knowledge creation and innovation resulted in a positive change or improved a process or outcome.

• New Flight RS-68 Rocket Engine for Delta IV Launch Vehicle—In this program, the team decreased the design/development cost by a factor of five and the cycle time by a factor of two. It also decreased the unit cost by a factor of five and decreased fail/fix cycles by a factor of 10.

• New MB-XX engine—In partnership with Japanese counterparts, work on this engine has led to a method to access foreign markets and leverage Japanese skills and technologies while also holding down development costs by virtue of the extensive use of virtual collaboration skills, practices, and technologies.

• The SLICE program—An example of innovation not only to Boeing Rocketdyne’s product and processes, but also to its business model and approach to people and teams.

• Simple,low-cost innovative concepts “turbopump” programs—A four-part turbopump was built and tested that replaced an earlier model that had 38 major parts with a significant reduction in cost and development schedule.

• New power cycle for rocket engines—In this case, the innovators knew the pros and cons of traditional approaches and wanted to combine the benefits and reduce the drawbacks. The innovators were expert in the key elements of the power cycle, so they had a great deal of tacit knowledge regarding the technical issues in design- ing and developing engines. (The innovation in this instance was simply to real- ize that a third, non-expendable fluid could be added that mitigated the issues associated with multiple fluids but essentially buffered the expendable fluids from hazardous interactions and reduced power demands.) The innovation was simple and robust. As a result, risks were minimized, and the innovation was much more attractive to the end users.

• New method of gathering information from suppliers to feed into internal systems—This is a model that can be used for multiple types of information and data. It used knowledge of several existing software packages, combined in a way that created a smooth flow of information across the supply chain, had minimal impact on any one company, and actually increased efficiency by giving quick visibility to the information in a context that all users understood. Boeing Rocketdyne also made sure the system allowed for two-way communications, and its use was well understood by the customers.