Commitment to innovative
management, quality and customer service earned the Boeing Delta II launch
team NASA’s George M. Low award. This award is NASA’s highest honor for
quality and technical performance.
Jay Witzling, Boeing vice president of Delta II, Delta III and
Titan Fairing programs, accepted the award from NASA Administrator Daniel S.
Goldin during a ceremony at the 15th annual NASA Continual Improvement and
Reinvention Conference on Quality Management in Alexandria, Va., on April
28.
“I am excited and happy to receive this honor on behalf of the Delta II
team,” said Witzling. “The Low award testifies to the team’s dedication to
excellence and continual improvement.”
Nominated by the Kennedy Space Center NASA customer, the Delta II launch
team received the award in the category of large-business product, one of
the four award categories. The other categories included small-business
product, small-business service and large-business service.
Award winners were evaluated in seven areas. They include customer
satisfaction and contract technical performance, schedule performance, cost
performance, management initiatives responsive to NASA’s strategic goals,
leadership and continuous improvement, innovative management and/or
technology breakthroughs, and items of special interest to NASA.
This is the first time the Delta II program has received the Low award. The
launch team was a semi-finalist for the award in 1998 and 1999.
The Delta II team has launched one spacecraft for NASA this year, the Imager
Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft on March 25.
