'Project Charlie' gets ready for launch  

The team at Chemring Countermeasures USA have reached a landmark moment with their huge $65 million expansion project as they get ready to hand the new facility to the business. First envisioned in 2018, the expansion project, known as "Project Charlie", includes investment in people development and new technologies, processes and equipment. The end result will be the most state-of-the-art, automated flare manufacturing facility in the world.  
Previously, the process for building flares at the Toone site in Tennessee has been a people-intensive endeavour that involved moving product from one building to another during different stages of the production process. With Project Charlie, nearly every stage is now under one roof, bringing improved safety, increased capabilities and improved efficiency.   

David Johnson, Director of Strategic Programmes and Joey Jenkins, Programme Manager, have both been instrumental in the project.

"Team Charlie is an incredibly talented group of dedicated individuals. Being able to work alongside them to bring this dream to life continues to be a very rewarding opportunity both professionally and personally. Everything we have accomplished to date is because of their incredible efforts. They are good people and great teammates," said David

"We were tasked with taking the best practices and lessons learnt from the Toone legacy facility, plus those from the Alpha and Bravo facilities (Chemring Countermeasures UK in Salisbury and Chemring Australia), to create the safest, most advanced flare manufacturing facility in the world. The primary project objectives were to improve safety for all employees on-site and increase production capabilities. We're achieving these goals by removing people from the manual processes, where most of the risks lie and allowing robots and other automated equipment to do the bulk of this work."  

"That doesn't mean that the project is about reducing jobs, though; in fact, it's quite the opposite. We have created more jobs that require a different skill set in order to run and manage the level of automation we now have on-site. Chemring has invested heavily in developing the great talent we already had at Toone for these new roles, as well as bringing on board some new technical talent from other industries.”

"Increased precautions for our team members and increased automation will help to move the countermeasure manufacturing industry forward, allowing us to safely and reliably deliver a more consistent product to our customer. We are about developing world-class manufacturing and world-class people in Toone." He added.

Project Charlie involved combining several disparate buildings spread out across the site into one state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. Explains David, "We’ve designed this new building to the latest codes and industry standards with safety at the centre of everything we’ve done. It’s been a huge undertaking and has truly stretched the very fabric of the organisation and transformed the way we operate.  

“We’ve found processes that work, processes that were broken and needed fixing, and we’ve introduced whole new ways of working. So it’s not just been about upskilling the plant floor; we’ve upskilled the entire team from manufacturing right through to our management processes.”  

“We built the team from the ground up. It’s been such an exciting project to work on, not to mention trying to deliver the project during a global pandemic! We’ve had technical challenges, skills and development challenges, and new codes to understand and work towards.”

Being part of a wider organisation has been invaluable to the project team. Early in the project, Charlie team members visited Chemring Australia to look at the Bravo project's processes, and lessons learnt. Engineering and production team members from the Alpha and Bravo facilities visited the Toone facility to share their best practices and collaborate with the Charlie team. 

Joey explains, “We learnt some valuable lessons from the Alpha and Bravo folks. One example was the importance of developing our in-house technical team—especially for automation controls. Chemring has made it possible for us to assemble a terrific in-house team of experts so we effectively ‘own’ and manage that knowledge and expertise ourselves. It means we’re not beholden to any external suppliers and vendors.” 

With Charlie online, CCM USA will significantly increase their production capabilities to meet the needs of their customer.

Joey adds “Our customer has had a walk through on-site and was very impressed with the automated processes and the scale of the facility. They are almost as excited about us bringing Charlie online as we are—almost.”  

David says: “It’s innovation on another level. We’re like the Henry Ford of flare manufacturing! What we’ve done here has never been done before in our industry and in such a short amount of time.” 

When asked what they have personally got out of being involved in such a landmark project, both David and Joey have a real sense of pride in what has been achieved. 

 “We have a number of veterans as part of our team here. Those guys have stories of being in the air on troop transports and hearing flares going off protecting them. My son recently enlisted in the US Army, and that has made this whole thing a lot more personal for me. What we’re making in Toone is life-saving equipment. We preserve life with the products we make. You may only get a few times in your professional career where you feel like you’re making a real difference—this is one of them for me.”  Joey explains

David adds, “I love delivering large projects. I think my career has set me up to run this project. I’ve used every single skill I have, from engineering and project management to process improvement. It’s rare to find a job you feel so suited to. 

“I’m also proud of the positive impact we are making on the local community in Toone. Charlie is creating a lot of opportunities for people. It’s a huge investment, and the impact on local people is great, from increasing the levels of education and training to pushing value out to vendors all over Tennessee and the United States. Chemring is a major player in helping the economic development of West Tennessee, and it’s great to be a part of it.”