Felix with his wife, Cynthia

Biography: Felix Delgaso was born and grew up in Bakersfield, California.  He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo.  He has recently earned an M.S. in Engineering and Productivity Management from Loyola Marymount University, where he took courses in Lean and Operations Management.

After graduating from Cal Poly, Felix worked on the Space Shuttle at Vandenberg Air Force Base for Lockheed Space Operations Company as a member of the Activation and Launch Team for the liquid hydrogen main propulsion system.  He then came to work for Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne as a Member of the Technical Staff, where he now has over twenty years of experience with space propulsion systems.  He started his career working on the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) designing a ground test engine that simulated operation at Mach 6.  He has also worked on the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), Space Station and the propulsion systems for the Delta IV rocket, the RS68 engine. While assigned to the RS-68 program, he first applied the Enterprise Thinking concepts of Water Logic, Taguchi methods and Dr. Deming’s theories in the development of this engine's Main Injector.  In doing so, significant improvements were achieved in the fabrication of the Main Injector as well as the Gas Generator.  Felix is now applying these "lessons learned" from RS-68 to the design of the upper stage propulsion system for the Ares rocket the J-2X.

Contact: Felix can be reached by e-mail at felix.delgado@pwr.utc.com for additional information about this pre-conference session.



Joe with his daughter, April

Biography: Joe Onstott was born and grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  He acquired a B.S. of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University after which he hired into the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) Canoga Park facility as a Member of the Technical Staff.  He has over 25 years of experience in the design, manufacture and test of rocket engines.  He started his career designing hardware for the Space Shuttle Main Engine; hardware that he has designed is currently flying on the Space Shuttle.  He then moved into management where he could focus more on improving the process of designing hardware and was responsible for both the Combustion Devices Design Department and the Engine Systems Design Department at different times.  His emphasis for improving the Design Process is based on approaching the design of any component from the system perspective, understanding and integrating the manufacturing process and customer requirements into the design.

Joe is currently heading up the improvement activities, called ACE (for Achieving Competitive Excellence) for PWR's Canoga Park Engineering organization. In this position, he is responsible for supporting the improvement of the engineering process by improving the infrastructure and the application of improvement tools.  He also provides engineering support to the various products as needed and is most reciently supporting the development of the J-2X FEMA/CIL.  

Joe has spent a significant amount of time applying systems thinking and Deming’s theory of management to the rocket business and currently presents PWR's Thinking Roadmap seminar, Managing Variation as a System, as well as Design for Variation.

He is an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer and has recently received his M.B.A. from Pepperdine University.

Contact: Joe can be reached by e-mail at joseph.onstott@pwr.utc.com for additional information about this pre-conference session.

Title: Enterprise Thinking and Purposeful Action

Date: Thursday, April 23rd

Length: 2 hours (5:15-7:15pm)

Location: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne - 6633 Canoga Avenue, Canoga Park

Cost: None

Description: This session will look at the rocket business, with perspectives on how “rocket scientist” leaders are applying “better thinking about thinking” to create better hardware.  The session also looks to the future for what’s next as well as covers some incredible rocket engine facts as well as thinking strategies used in the business, with hardware examples using better thinking.

Target Audience: People interested in seeing different perspectives on hardware design, its integration into production.

Organization Issues: Deming's management theories have broad applicability to products and processes, including rocket engine designs and fabrication processes. Without application results, thinking transformation efforts will be doomed to failure. This session will present examples of applications over the past 10 years within PWR.

Objectives: Provide practical examples, discussion and approaches of Enterprise Thinking on hardware production and design. Provide some "incredible facts" on the SSME rocket engine.

Handouts: Available for download after the Forum