| Anniversaries (April and May)
Ken Best - 31 years!
John Haas - 26 years!
Sara Graham and Jeremy Kolb - 13 years!
Travis Lowe - 10 years!
Adam Wires, Jonathan Ingram, Brian Sammis, Philip Helm, Joseph Clements, and Colton Fordham - 1 year! |
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| IPD Committee Opportunities
Do you have some fun ideas for our next parties or want to join the IPD Event Committee? Shoot IPD-Event-Planning@ara.com an email!
Our employee recognition committee is looking for three new members! Reach out to Shari if you are interested! |
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| Mud Season at Chandler's
Once again, our own Louis Rogowski and Amy Urana rocked it in local theater! Also joining them at Chandler’s annual Mud Season Talent show on March 29th was scientist Elizabeth Fox. Elizabeth volunteered her time behind the scenes, assisting with technical set-up. Amy and Louis kept the audience engaged with humorous skits in between each act. In addition, Louis shared his talent by performing a monologue of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
From poetry to cloggers, fiddlers and pianists, the Mud Season Talent Show is Central Vermont’s way to celebrate our 5th season, Mud Season! Our small town of Randolph is proud to call the Chandler Center for the Arts home. In addition to the talent show, the Chandler boasts many events throughout the year, including the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival, the Vermont Philharmonic and an annual 4th of July presentation by local students. This year’s presentation will be The Little Mermaid. To find out more about upcoming events, here is a link:
CHANDLER | Chandler Center for the Arts Vermont, Art Gallery & Venue (chandler-arts.org)
Thank you to Louis, Amy and Elizabeth for their community involvement in the arts!
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| Dianne Elias
Dianne has joined the Randolph crew as the new smiling receptionist. She is a fan of all of Vermont's seasons, declaring "each have their own beauty and you can't have one without the others." One day, Dianne hopes to complete a bucket list item traveling North Amerca by train! |
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| Sam Bryan
Instead of Sam's five-year-old dreams of being a pilot, he joins the Greenville team as a Systems Engineer! Sam is driven by continuous learning and improvement, innovation, and integrity. Outside of work you can find him mountain biking, camping, hiking, and cooking. |
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| Patrick Powers
With a background in systems and electronics testing for automotive development, Patrick joins the Greenville crew as our Test Engineer! His favorite quote is "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It's the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill. Patrick prefers to drink sweet tea and listen to podcasts. |
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| Denis Ogiyenko
Denis is following his childhood dream of being an electric engineer as he joins the Greenville team as one! To be his most productive self, Denis must be sure he gets a good night's sleep. One day he hopes to travel the West Coast states and Europe! |
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| Stork Visits
The stork paid a visit to two IPD families in February and March!
Meet Luca, Makenzie’s newest addition was born mid-February!
Congratulations Hoberek Family!
Also, meet Lily, Joseph's newest addition in the family was born mid-March!
Congratulations Clements Family!
Last but not least, meet Theodore, Philip's new addition to the family!
Congratulations Helm Family!
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| Visit to Arsenal in Warren, MI
Dale Mashtare, John Hall, Matt Fordham visited the Arsenal in Warren, MI. meeting with PEO Ground Combat Systems, PMs within the Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC), PM for the Remote Combat Vehicle, Chief Scientist for GVSC Dr. Gorsich, the G5 for GVSC, and a handful of technology companies. The purpose of the trip was to continue to get ARA’s name around the Arsenal as someone who could partner with the Government on key technology challenges like ground robotics, Model Based Systems Engineering, Predictive Maintenance, as well as System Integration partners. |
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| Thank you!
I’d like to give a team shoutout to everyone that worked on the GPMS Health and Utility Monitoring System (HUMS) project. After our initial meeting with them 2 years ago, we recently delivered our first kits to this new customer and the response from their VP of Operations was “What a great improvement to receive things kitted in this way! Can’t wait to get them started on other platforms!”. IPD is currently quoting the 2nd platform and we expect to ultimately become the supplier for all of their platforms (around 15).
- Garvin |
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| TCPE Cetification
Congratulations to Michael Norton on obtaining his Trusted Cost Proposal Expert (TCPE) certification! To become certified for this role an employee must attend TCPE training provided by corporate. Upon completion of the training, which includes passing an exam, the employee is then required to review five proposals with at least 95% accuracy. Michael achieved this milestone in March! What does this mean? Michael can now complete a TCPE review of proposals without further review from corporate staff.
TCPE reviewers scrub proposals before they are submitted to our customers to ensure we are in compliance with ARA’s estimating system and the RFP, and review the cost narrative for completeness and accuracy, just to list a few of the items on the checklist. Be sure to congratulate Michael on this achievement when you see him! |
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| Creating a culture of Quality
“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; It represents the wise choice of many alternatives” – William A. Foster
What is a “culture of Quality”?
To me, it’s an organization that is collectively aligned with meeting the needs of the Customer, internal and external.
Quality is far more than control or inspection. It is a philosophy in our organization that creates an environment where team members genuinely care about meeting their customers’ requirements, workmanship and make decisions on achieving that level of quality.
A true quality culture is fundamental to making product that is safe and effective in meeting our Customers’ needs and will provide a solid foundation to launch us to the next level of our strategic development.
The benefits of having that collective focus on the Customer include: increased and repeat sales due to our high reputation, charging premium prices because our Quality is worth it and reduced resources to deliver product to our Customer due to the commitment to improvement so we’ll deliver faster, giving us more capacity to handle more contracts. In other words, sales volume goes up while internal costs go down, so overall profit skyrockets!
In addition, we’ll spend less available profit on scrapped parts, re-work, warranty replacements and in-field repairs.
There are a lot of companies out there that can do what we do. But can they do it as well as we do? The secret to success is solid processes run by amazing people. Our strength is our people and our strong relationships.
Focusing on self-interest, being right or personal agendas is counterproductive and can create resentment or unwillingness to collaborate.
Developing a quality culture requires everyone to exhibit empathy, vision, vulnerability, and willingness to embrace change.
This oftentimes means doing things in a way you’ve never done before. Times change, technology changes, people change and Customer interests change as well. Doing things the same way and expecting different results rarely meets Customer needs or keeps you ahead of the competition.
But imagine our changing our initial reaction to change initiatives from “We can’t do that!” or “That won’t work!” to “How can I help?”.
Quality is where attention to detail and passion for improvement will make a lasting impact. Remember, quality is not just a role, it's a philosophy that transforms ordinary into extraordinary. Embrace the challenge, champion standards, and together, let's raise the bar of excellence.
Quality is ARA and ARA is Quality
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| FIDAE
April 9th - 14th
Pathfinder and ARC4
MDEX
April 23rd - 25th
Otonos
IFCEE
May 7th - 10th
Vertek
LANPAC
May 14th - 16th
Pathfinder and ARC4 |
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