Mr. Lester A. Griffin

Mr. Lester A. Griffin began his distinguished civil service career in 1959 at Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey, as a Munitions Design Engineer. In his early career he was well known for identifying the cause and solution for massive failures in sintered gears and pinions in ordnance fuses. During his career, when the Army was faced with a shortage of fuses for mortar rounds in Vietnam.

Later, Mr. Griffin designed an interim fuse which was produced in-house at Picatinny and Frankford Arsenals. Over a few months, 2 million fuses were produced alleviating the fuse related battlefield shortage of mortar ammunition. Mr. Griffin changed career paths to pursue a career in quality, advocating improvements in processes and process control in munitions manufacturing to replace inspection. This endeavor took him, along with his family ,from Picatinny Arsenal to Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois when the Munitions Command and the Weapons Command merged in 1973.

Because of his vision, leadership, and the quality assurance strategies he put in place, the Army fought with world class ammunition. Under his leadership, malfunction rates declined dramatically and accuracy increased, which paved the way to today's precision munitions.

Mr. Griffin led the Army's effort in adopting open standards replacing military standards culminating in the adoption of the ISO 9000 Series of quality standards: the first in the Department of Defense. His initiatives were incorporated into the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) “Blueprint for Change,” a military specifications and standards reform initiative, by Dr. William Perry, the Secretary of Defense, and approved by the Vice President, Al Gore, in 1994. These standards are now the de facto standards for the Army today.

Mr. Griffin entered the Senior Executive Service in 1985 as the Deputy for Product Assurance and Test and Industrial Operations Management for the AMCCOM where he culminated his storied career. He was the principal advisor over the integration and execution of the AMCCOM product assurance and test mission, production mission and contractor industrial relations.

Mr. Griffin retired in 1994 and passed away in 2007.