In the System
WFO business is good at ORCMT
Some of the folks at the Oak Ridge Centers for Manufacturing Technology were tapping their toes to the sound of “Rocky Top” recently and it wasn’t because it’s football time in Tennessee.
ORCMT took advantage of its monthly large staff meeting to celebrate the end of a very successful fiscal 1998 with a gathering in the the 9203 “ballroom” complete with music and words of congratulations from senior management. The main cause for celebration was the fact that ORCMT recorded $30 million in “funds-in” Work For Others in fiscal 1998.
In addition to that, the centers met all of their FY ‘98 milestones, and laid the ground work for next fiscal year’s goal for $35 million in Work For Others.
According to Terry Futrell, ORCMT’s director of program support and planning, the centers have experienced tremendous growth since FY 1995 when the Work For Others totalled $8.4 million with 13 industrial partners compared to FY 1998’s total of $30.6 million and 140 industrial partners.
As a measure of success, customer satisfaction has been consistently high for the centers with 78 percent of customers rating the performance a four on a five-point scale, which helps bring them back as repeat customers and contributes to the fact that in FY98 35 percent of the ORCMT’s WFO customers were repeat customers representing $18.9 million in revenue.
In 1998, the centers experienced a 45 percent growth in federal and non-federal work despite a 25 percent cut in business development funding, according to Futrell.
Lew Felton, Energy Systems Vice President for Defense Programs told the celebration that his entire career had been spent with very technically competent people with a “can do attitude. ORCMT is right at the very top of the can do list,” he said.
Felton congratulated the ORCMT employee team on their achievement, telling them it was very clear to him that given the opportunity the centers were going to do surprising things while working toward the goals of the Energy Systems Strategic Plan.
“That plan helps protect Y-12’s ability to do its main mission by keeping those mission critical skills finely honed while at the same time allowing those skills to be used throughout the country to improve the national security in a highly competitive world environment,” Felton said.
Dave Beck, leader of Manufacturing Technology Services, also congratulated the centers on their accomplishment, noting that “there are several hundred more people at work than there would be without your efforts.”
