P], Introduction When one does tend to think of the NASA space program, perhaps the thought of the

proud 1969 Apollo Moon landing are conjured along with the success that NASA subsequently had with the Voyager spacecraft mission that has so far been on track with regard to the predicted trajectory of its mission (Broad, 1990). Therefore, what type of problem would the elite organization, an organization that assembles the most educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists, could these individuals have internally?

The history of NASA funding has always been of issue as the program receives its budget from the executive branch of the federal government (Broad, 1990). Therefore, NASA funding has been subject to cuts, at times extensive, for the federal government to divert funding to programs within departments such at the Department of Defense, that yield a more direct return to the military industrial complex that supports and protects its corporate backers.

As NASA pushes toward returning the shuttle fleet to space, some current and former employees are questioning how serious the space agency is about fixing the broken safety culture that investigators have said was a major cause of the loss of the Columbia and its crew two years ago. (Schwartz, 2005) Subsequent lack of funding has rendered cuts to the budget of NASA, which has developed into administrative cutbacks and subsequently the recruitment of talent that may not be capable of handling the arduous and complicated mathematical and scientific rigor that is requisite to many of the programs within NASA.

Fiscal cutbacks to NASA has ostensibly forced the hand of the human resources, as well as capital resources and technology which have seem to correlate with major catastrophes and critical mission miscalculations leading to damaged craft and delayed shuttle launches. The shuttle Columbia, its countdown abruptly halted three times by technical problems, is now undergoing repairs to fix a new type of fuel leak that recently forced a flight postponement of 11 days. (Broad, 1990)

The technical issues ostensibly are stem from the fiscal cutbacks to the National Aeronautical and Space Administrations budget which caused the operating budget for these missions to be stretched in ways that would cause errors and miscalculations, most likely in the areas of materials science and the ability for chosen materials to handle certain stresses. Such stresses potentially include prolonged exposure to high heat and cold temperatures, and dramatic changes in pressure. Its a workforce subject that has suddenly gotten deadly serious. Investigators seeking answers to the Columbia disaster say human resources issues may be at least partly to blame for the tragedy. (Shuit, 2003)

Statement of the Relevant Principles to be applied

The principles appertaining to the understanding and the functionality of NASA are broad and dynamic in that human resources must facilitate internal training programs to ensure that proper training to the level of ability show in past NASA employees. Additionally, a thorough and rigorous six sigma program should be instituted at NASA as process control and the limitation of variation is extremely important when considering the very limited range of acceptability regarding the variance of the successful operation in comparison to the unsuccessful.

Therefore critical areas include; Program & Project Management, Organization Culture, human resources management, principles of management, change leadership and planning processes, six sigma, process management, total quality management, and kaizen. Inclusively, these areas of managerial function incorporate a top down management of human and capital resources linked by information and other forms of technology.

Program and Project Management are critical to identifying the most urgent and important programs that should undergo funding given the budget constraint NASA faces each year. Often, NASA must choose between research expeditions and surveillance missions where the benefit to human kind is more innate and intangible than capitalists are accustomed. NASA is seen as an effort of excess, that is, the federal government had generated a large enough tax base to fund programs that enable the exploration of space.

Project management principles are used extensively in some federal organizations, notably NASA and the Defense Department. But project management is far less common in other federal agencies. (Peal, 2000)

Therefore, one of the main programs that NASA should undertake is to effectively create and manage a safety management program under the auspice of project management throughout the organization. The program must be set within parameters that support the organizational goal structure (Wong, Desai, Maden, Roberts, Ciavarelli, 2005). The proper safety program is designed to integrate safety protocol across all operations including human and mechanical that ensure limited process variability.

Often times, the problem with implementing six sigma and process management for product design and manufacturing control is within the supply chain to where there is not control over the manufacture of the critical parts that go into the shuttle or that contribute to the learning process of the NASA employee. NASAS contracts with private vendors for the materials used to develop the space shuttles and other devices and instruments the administration uses daily and on missions. Therefore the culture must integrate safety into the fabric of the organization to the extent that safety is an operative term and part of the daily vocabulary. Additionally, NASA may have to decide to deal only with contractors that utilize the process management or six sigma methodologies in designing the material components that are used by NASA on the space shuttle missions.

KAIZEN is the practice of removing MUDA or waste from the operation. Most significant in the application of KAIZEN are the improvement of production quality and the performance improvement in reliability of processes internal and external to the organization. The KAIZEN management methodology calls for continuous improvement inclusive of the smallest change. KAIZEN is complementary to six sigma methodologies and the notion of continuous process improvement.

The integration of KAIZEN management with six sigma methodology as a function of process management that governs the activity of the NASA workforce is the proactive measure that will detect and identify specific breaches in the functionality of critical operations within the space program. Human resources training programs as a function of enabling KAIZEN and six sigma are important to removing the process irregularities and to identify and address the deficiencies within the management of NASA.

To avert Challenger-type snafus, one must first be able to recognize its symptoms and their systemic/root causes. They run to the core of organizational functioning, cutting across issues of managerial style and the culture, structure, and politics of organizations. (Maier, 2002) KAIZEN is such a managerial philosophy that is able to break through political paradigms and shift the focus to a more complete and perhaps rigid process that is able to identify error and reduce the probability of default as a function of error reduction and inherently increase the reliability of each mission.

Current troubles were seen mainly as the consequences of poor decisions and management in the old NASA of the 1970s and the 1980s; whereas, the new NASA was moving in the right direction. (Maier, 2002) However, subsequent problems with NASA including space flight delays at Cape Canaveral have raised concern regarding the process management capabilities of the administration.

Analysis and Application of Principles

The NASA space program has been subject to cost reduction as a function of its budget as approved by the executive branch of the federal government. A decade later in the 1970s with the cessation of the Apollo missions, NASA was forced to cut back. (Burke, Richley, DeAngelis, 1985) The demand to maintain and improve on the current level of quality and successes of the programs past has caused NASA to make lofty promises that may not be entirely out of the realm of possibility if the right process control and management of program activity is in place.

Given the increase in the budgetary constraint with regard to hiring new employees and retaining skilled employees due to the high cost of retirement packages and the level of salary associated with senior pay structures, the organization saw it mandatory to offer buyout packages to the senior employees and to reduce the salary of the entry level staff and management. Such cutbacks have caused the most appropriate human talent to seek employment at rival departments such as the Department of Defense, or to enter into private contracting to the federal government or work with private organizations.

The culture of the organization has been reported as in major need of reintegration into a holistic and supportive collective that is symbiotic in its approach to one another and to its affiliation to the organization. The focus on safety and on the importance of safety throughout the process of administration and development appeared to be no longer a primary objective in the daily operations of the staff.

An organizations safety culture is defined as the shared values, beliefs, assumptions, and norms that may govern organizational decision-making, as well as individual and group attitudes about danger, safety, and the proper conduct of hazardous operations. (Wong, Desai, Madsen, Ciavarelli, 2005) The notion regarding NASA from outside observers was that the culture within NASA was not reflective of the aforementioned, underlying fabric that governs relationships and unites a workforce toward achieving a common goal.

The practice of change leadership is important to the overall contiguous development and success of programs within NASA. As leadership within successful programs are able to transition to new programs within NASA, new methodologies and a more comprehensive framework that governs and directs the operations of a particular operation become inherent to

the operations and administrative fabric of the organization. Management than only needs to ensure that those requiring further training are able to receive training and that process management techniques are adhered to and findings from the results are implemented.

Six sigma as an internal process to facilitate human capital operational control and workforce activity as a function of the available technological inputs that require human interaction as well as the human capital input that directly is attributable to process success or process failure is critical to the organizational framework. Ostensibly, the human resources deficiency and the design failures that have led to the problems associated with events of disaster or delay for NASA can be addressed via the six sigma methodology. As Larry Mulloy, one of the launch officials stated, We were lucky-just dumb-ass lucky-that we hadnt had a disaster like this before (personal communication, May 15, 1991). (Maier, 2002)

The ability to address precisely where the deficiencies inherently lay with the daily activity and integration of the NASA workforce with the internal and external environment subject to the continuous facilitation of project goals. For instance, a project may involve a workgroup with the job of ensuring the cabin pressure is properly regulated at all times and is properly integrated with all systems that enable its function and not interfering with concurrent operations.

Additionally, there are political processes from executive branch officials and within NASA that parlay into the operations of NASA. Contractors that establish a relationship with NASA are often investigated when a problem arises regarding the operations of the material. NASA launch officials proceeded over the objections of a second prime contractor, Rockwell, that were expressed the morning of the launch itself, when the senior Rockwell aerospace

manager, Rocco Petrone alarmed by reports of ice chunks covering the launch gantry-instructed his on-site representative, Bob Glaysher, to make sure NASA understands that Rockwell feels it is not safe to launch (Rogers, 1986, p. 1800).

KAIZEN within the organizational framework is a function of management that is trained properly in the effective deployment of KAIZEN principles and management techniques within the framework of the organization. The inability to enable KAIZEN under the auspice of the program objectives is a failure to properly understand how KAIZEN will enable the process management of human and technical resources.

The most effective method to enable KAIZEN is through training programs that specifically incorporate KAIZEN into the role of process management as to enable the reduction in variability in the manufacture of goods or in the processes of human productivity in all its forms. Internal training programs within NASA should have been within the budget from an early period. The program does not adequately train its employees subject to the responsibility inherent in the operations of the administration.

The appearance of NASA relying on the innate capability of its workforce upon arrival to NASA is insufficient to enable the future activity of the organization. This is due to the lack of improvement in the education of subsequent generations since the peak of NASA success at the time of Apollo 13. With less in the budget and increasing challenges facing NASA, the inability to address the issues of training a sustainable workforce to handle the technical workload will inevitably result in additional failure for NASA.

Total Quality Management or TQM is the process that ostensibly links KAIZEN, six sigma, and process management together as a holistic tool to enable the reduction in process variability and hence a reduction in error and waste. By reducing waste in the design and production process, the cost of each project within each program decreases which reduces the stress on the administrations operating budget.

Total Quality Management seeks to establish the most optimal technique and process design to facilitate the A to Z management of the workload. By continuously monitoring the process and ensuring there is limited to zero variation in each facet of the process, the likelihood for six sigma and KAIZEN estimates to match with actual results increases precipitously. Therefore, TQM is an enabler of six sigma and KAIZEN management techniques, which facilitate process management either of the human or technical nature.

The hiring process is additionally a function of human resources management and total quality management. By incorporating TQM with KAIZEN, human resources management is forced to eliminate waste from the recruiting process. This is to remove all non-fundamental aspects of recruitment, evaluation, and training such as searching social media websites for dirt on the potential new hire or by monitoring communications and testing bodily samples to monitor outside work activities. The fundamental aspects are then in focus which are directly a function of the job design that is inherently facilitated by the role within process design and control.

Conclusion

NASA has seen a period of phenomenal success and subsequent accolades for the technical and scientific nature of the program. The benefit of NASA has been the development of technology that has trickled into the consumer markets, such as materials used in clothing and new operations and technologies now used in laptop computers. These advancements are attributable to NASA yet with drastic cuts to the funding of the program, the level of technology that is a derivative of the program may be eliminated.

The recommended managerial approaches which focus around KAIZEN and incorporate human resources management all the way down into the supply chain are designed to address all facets of the comprehensively integrated yet someone disenfranchised managed operations and programs within the administration. Most importantly, the culture of safety must be reintegrated into the fabric of the organizational management. Without the reintegration of safety as the unifying force, there is likely to be continued failure as the motivation to remove variability in terms of the psychological component is absent and therefore fatigue and stress become larger components within the probability for human error and failure.

The budget may not allocate funding to finance all that NASA would like to undertake. However, investment into extensive training programs will assist to prepare employees to understand the very intricate nature of the mathematical modeling that is inherent to the proper functioning of the craft design. The critical errors and flaws in design that have enabled past disasters, and perhaps the ability for one to commit sabotage, if in fact true, is inherent to flaws in the overall process management and safety management of the NASA space program.

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