History

RI, Founded in 2005

The Roadmaps Institute (RI) was founded in 2005 by Dr. S. L. Starling to meet the needs of companies that included Raytheon, Boeing, Sandia National Labs, Goodrich Aerostructures, and Lockheed-Martin.    Since then, over 200 companies have used RI's step charts, industry models, and programs to improve.  

Academic Roots,  Industry Relevance

Prior to RI, Dr. Starling served as an Associate Professor and Director of Resident Supply Chain Management (SCM) Programs at the University of San Diego (USD).   She was probably best known at the time as a consultant to Silicon Valley companies in the 1990s, co-developer of 7 MBA and MS business programs in California and Asia,  Director and architect of the #2 and then #3 enrollment size academic Supply Chain Management programs, and co-author of a best selling book titled World-Class Supply Management: The Key to Supply Chain Management.

Part of why the World Class Supply Management book was successful is on page 8 it had a simple step chart showing the progression to world-class  best practices in Supply Management.  The step chart was used by managers to assess where their organization was against best practices, aka world-class.   The next 680 pages of the book explained how to close the gaps.  

Due to the success of the chart, Dr. Starling started creating more step charts for other core competency areas of business.   The charts became the foundation of the Roadmaps Institute.

If You Build It They Will Come

While at the University of San Diego, many Aerospace companies had managers enrolled in Dr. Starling's USD-SCM courses and they discovered how powerful gap analysis was in using the step charts.  

For example, Boeing - Long Beach scored its Cost Management capability at the time as 4.7 out of 10.   Using the World-Class Cost Management Chart, managers at Boeing could identify capabilities needed to improve Boeing to the Proactive and then World-Class Steps.

In 2004, Rusty Patterson represented executives of Raytheon Company and sat in on final project presentations by Raytheon students for one of Dr. Starling's classes.  He noted in almost every presentation the managers showed a step chart to help explain why they chose their projects.   Intrigued, Mr. Patterson met with Dr. Starling to discuss the Gap Method he saw presented by his own managers.  

Sketch and a Handshake

Dr. Starling proceeded to show  Mr. Patterson several other new step charts that were going into a holistic manufacturing focused model Dr. Starling was developing.   While Dr. Starling happened to have printouts of four step charts on hand, the new model had to be sketched. 

Mr. Patterson looked at the sketch of the draft model and suggested some changes that would make it reflect Aerospace Industry needs for Raytheon.  At the end of the meeting, a handshake deal was made between Dr. Starling and Raytheon to develop an Aerospace Industry Segment Model with ten step charts representing the ten most important core competencies to the industry of: Cost, Customer, Demand, Design, eCommerce, Leadership, Lean, Program, Quality,  and Supplier.   

Roadmaps Institute Begins

In 2005,  Dr. Starling left the University of San Diego and started the Roadmaps Institute to be able to meet demands of the Aerospace Industry.  

Raytheon, the primary client,  committed to and followed through with having managers assess their six divisions on all ten step charts.  From the assessments, opportunities between the divisions could be identified.  After getting a better handle on their internal assessments, Raytheon brought in the United States Air Force as its key customer and shared the methodologies with alliance designated suppliers.

A book called DR2IVE was written in support of programs within Aerospace.  DR2IVE (DRRIVE) is the acronym "Developing Robust Roadmaps Integrating Value Enterprises."  DR2IVE was written for exclusive use in RI programs and requires an engagement with RI to be accessed.

Success and Growth

The methods worked well.  The Roadmaps Institute was enthusiastically received.  Several hundred companies had used RI step charts by 2008.  Aerospace Industry clients alone accounted for 194 assessments.  

When enough companies in a particular industry have conducted assessments and provided the data to RI, then RI can roll the data up to measure progress and differences between chains, regions and the industry.  RI refers to such summary statistics as Business Capability Indices or BCI. 

Before 2009,  all RI programs were held in the United States.  Since then RI has held workshops in Asia and Australia utilizing the step charts to teach the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Australians best practices and collaboration approaches across their supply chains.

In addition, it became apparent the step charts could be combined to create programs such as L2G or Lean-to-Green ( developed for the Air Force) and CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility (developed for AT&T).   L2G for example, uses three step charts covering Lean, Process, and Sustainability.  CSR also has three step charts of Diversity, Outreach, and Sustainability.

Beyond 2023

Today there are 15 Industry Segment Models, 25 World-Class Management Step Charts, and 18 Programs.  RI also created software for aiding in conducting assessments as well as a proprietary online learning system for online discussions and collaboration.  

The pandemic and more recent economic uncertainty has made it difficult for companies to decide how to improve their companies heading into the future.    While there have been ups and downs over the years, our mission remains ....

"The Roadmaps Institute is dedicated to assisting organizations in building competitive advantage via world-class best practices and unparalleled collaboration."