NSTC Teaches Lean Six Sigma to Chicago Federal Executive Board

From Naval Service Training Command Public Affairs

CHICAGO (NNS) -- The Federal Executive Board hosted Naval Service Training Command (NSTC) to teach a second Lean Six Sigma course to federal executives throughout the Chicagoland area, May 21.

One hundred fourteen executives from 24 federal organizations participated in the one-day continual-process-improvement (CPI) training.

Lean Six Sigma is a workplace practice that relies on collaborative team efforts to improve performance by eliminating waste and focusing on mission accomplishment.

"There is a real thirst for Lean Six Sigma techniques in our community. We quickly filled up both courses," said Jean Brown, executive director of the Chicago Federal Executive Board. "There is a real cost savings to our community by providing this training with local expertise."

Cmdr. Matthew Harding, NSTC CPI department head, Lt. Daniel Walker, and Mark Florez led the training to encourage government organizations to review their processes for effectiveness, efficiency, and contribution to the mission.

"The Lean Six Sigma Champion course is an excellent opportunity to teach leaders how to implement process improvement in their organizations and to help them better accomplish their daily missions," said Harding.

The course provided executive leadership, managers, and process owners the skills necessary to lead process improvement teams within their respective commands and departments.

"Having instructors who are aware of the unique Federal challenges to implementing Lean Six Sigma was ideal as they were able to share their experiences of successfully jumping through bureaucratic hoops to identify and remove inefficiencies," said Brown. "All of the different Federal agencies added to the discussion with process improvement stories from the Veterans Affairs, Social Security, U.S. Department of Agriculture and others."

Lean Six Sigma is a combination of two methodologies under the larger umbrella of CPI. Both methodologies rely on a collaborative team effort representing the process workers, customers, and stakeholders to improve performance. The lean methodology maps out the value stream of a process and identifies the value added, non-value added, and business value steps. From the value stream, the process improvement teams identify and reduce the eight kinds of waste: transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, over processing, defects, and under-utilization of employees.

Six Sigma focuses on analyzing the voice of the process and identifying means to reduce the variation of the process so a more consistent and reliable outcome can be achieved. Six Sigma refers to having a process that only has 3.4 defects per every one million opportunities because almost all variation has been removed.

NSTC oversees 98 percent of initial officer and enlisted accessions training for the Navy, as well as the Navy's citizenship development program. NSTC includes Recruit Training Command (RTC), the Navy's only boot camp; NROTC at more than 160 colleges and universities across the country; Officer Training Command (OTC) in Newport, Rhode Island; NJROTC and Navy National Defense Cadet Corps (NNDCC) citizenship development programs at more than 600 high schools worldwide.