Design for Excellence (DfX)
Transformation Kickoff
A top 3 U.S. defense contractor faced persistent issues in a $11B business unit: product designs were not easily producible, lacked platform commonality, and often missed critical delivery deadlines. To overcome this, leadership sought a scalable Design for Excellence (DfX) transformation to improve engineering collaboration and design maturity across the enterprise.
​
Chuck led the assessment and design of a new DfX operating model, beginning with a cross-functional gap analysis to identify friction points in the product lifecycle. The analysis revealed systemic breakdowns in design governance, unclear ownership, and minimal alignment between design teams and downstream manufacturing functions.
​
To address this, an enterprise-wide DfX governance framework was developed, including a phased OKR-based roadmap and a sustainable implementation rhythm for executives and engineering teams. The solution enabled clear ownership, faster design iteration, and improved cross-business unit integration.
​
The outcome was a validated implementation path and executive toolkit to embed DfX principles across programs. In year one alone, the roadmap uncovered over $20M in potential cost and productivity savings—positioning the organization to meet delivery targets with higher efficiency and design maturity.
