Army Continues to Make Progress in Business Transformation
July 25, 2006
The U.S. Army Forces in Korea will graduate their first class of Lean Six Sigma Black Belts July 28, as part of the Army’s business-transformation efforts. A specific initiative within the Army, Lean Six Sigma is a method of empowering Soldiers and civilian employees to dissect and re-engineer virtually any kind of process to remove wasteful steps, streamlining that process to become more efficient. These trained “Black Belts” -- now-skilled instructors and leaders of the process -- will apply Lean Six Sigma principles across the Army, with the goal of improving the service's business practices in such critical areas as reset, repair, manufacturing and administration.
Using Lean Six Sigma as the enabling process, this business transformation effort is changing the Army business culture. “The senior leadership, and particularly myself and the Chief (Chief of Staff of the Army), are absolutely passionate about continuous improvement,” said Secretary of the Army Dr. Francis J. Harvey. “This envisioned change in our culture drives down costs rather than always seeking to increase the top line, and, as always, is founded in Army values.” In June the Army even established a "schoolhouse" for Lean Six Sigma training 256 senior leaders so far. The school currently has 23 lean green belt candidates and 105 lean black belt candidates.
The recently implemented spending restrictions to reduce overall Army costs have been confused in some quarters as being related to the business transformation efforts. They are unrelated. The Army took these short-term spending restrictions because of the Fiscal Year 2006 budget shortfall, the timing of the Fiscal Year 2006 supplemental, and the current uncertainties surrounding the Fiscal Year 2007 budget. Certainly, any efficiency found through process reviews like Lean Six Sigma will help achieve a right-sized work force, but right now, the Army is not letting full time employees go other than through normal attrition. All the current hiring restrictions are short-term actions and are considered to be the constitutional, legal and fiduciary obligations of the Army to make ends meet with the budget it has been given. Business transformation is for the long term.
The Army has additional black belt and green belt training courses scheduled over the next six months to empower its leaders to direct and implement improvements. “Lean Six Sigma empowers people and helps them see the possibilities. People learn that they can document processes that haven't been documented, quantify work activities that haven't been quantified, and measure results that haven't been measured,” Harvey said. “They also learn it's OK to challenge assumptions and think creatively about how to get work done more efficiently.
“Our approach to workforce adjustments is consistent with my management philosophy of treating every person with dignity and respect. Army leadership is committed to transforming the way we do business,” he said. “As we reduce the Army’s workload through initiatives like Lean Six Sigma, we will in parallel reduce the size of the workforce through attrition to match this decreased workload. So there will be no staff reductions per se, in terms of our Department of Army Civilians. Our approach is to carefully think through when a Department of Army Civilian leaves whether that person should be replaced or not based on the reduction in workload. That’s the basic principle that we’re applying here.”
“We’re in an era of increasing demands on our force with fiscal resources that we’re going to continue to fight for,” said Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Chief of Staff of the Army. “So we have to do all we can with what we have, and we have to figure out ways to do things faster and more efficiently, to be able to meet this demand.”
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