Joint force employees share process improvement ideas

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Monique Randolph
  • Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs
LANSDOWNE, Va. (AFPN) --  More than 1,000 military and civilian defense department employees came together May 13 to 17 to compare process improvement notes during a four-day conference in Lansdowne, Va.

During the 2008 Department of Defense Continuous Process Improvement Symposium, Airmen from around the world shared input and gleaned ideas from other services and defense agencies to further Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century efforts within their organizations.

AFSO 21 is the Air Force's name for Continuous Process Improvement, or CPI.

"AFSO 21 does much more than produce results," said Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne, a keynote speaker during the event's opening day. "It empowers Airmen to effect change. It facilitates their learning about how to design more effective and efficient work processes."

AFSO 21 is key to managing the manning and budgetary restraints facing today's Air Force by providing methods, tools and philosophies that can help improve and streamline processes across the service.

"When we think of [CPI], we focus on the content of the work process," Secretary Wynne said. "As each step is reviewed, CPI forces us to ask whether that step adds value, and if so, what value does it add? If a step does not add value, we think about eliminating it. We also consider finding new ways to do the work. CPI is willing to ask whether the process itself needs to be fixed. I call this 'looking at the content' of the process.

"When we look at the content of our work processes, we start to see how we can work smarter," the Secretary continued. "That is the heart of Continuous Process Improvement, working smarter, not harder. I sometimes [refer] to this as a 'lazy person's approach to productivity.' Stop doing dumb things. Sometimes working smarter generates cost savings that can be reinvested in critical programs. Most times, however, CPI results in improving the quality of work life or quality of life itself."

The convention featured seminars, exhibits and workshops focused on continuous process improvement training and lessons learned.

"I'm here to learn more about what the other services are doing and how they're implementing CPI, and also to benchmark off the other services and maybe share some of our successes with them," said Tech. Sgt. Phil Godfrey of the AFSO 21 office at Pope Air Force Base, N.C. "I'm looking forward to taking some of the knowledge I've gained from the briefers and seminars back to my wing. Pope is beyond rapid improvement events."

A keynote speaker from civilian industry also gave a presentation about how CPI works within his organization.

Dr. Gary Kaplan, a physician and chief executive officer of Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Wash., said in 2002, during a visit to Boeing, he was introduced to the Toyota Production System. He and members of his staff subsequently visited the Toyota plant in Japan.

Applying the "lean" techniques employed by Toyota to medical processes, Dr. Kaplan said the medical center has significantly eliminated waste throughout its departments, streamlined processes and are finding ways to complete their mission using half the human effort, equipment, space and inventory.

"Some of our doctors said, 'Hey, we deal with life or death; we don't build cars or airplanes.' But if a car fails on the freeway and a family of four dies, that's life or death. If a plane falls out of the sky, that's life or death. So, we had to ... realize we're not the only ones who deal with life or death. By understanding the processes, we could do a better job," he said.

With any process improvement initiative, it's important to encourage employees to develop innovative ideas, Dr. Kaplan said. Air Force leaders agree.

"Senior leadership in the Air Force is leaning on the system to produce results, and there's no other way to do it; wing and unit commanders have got to rely on their people to bring in ideas," he said.

AFSO 21 and continuous process improvement are important to every unit and organization in the Air Force, said Gen. William R. Looney III, commander of Air Education and Training Command and a guest speaker at the symposium.

"We'll never have all the resources we need to do everything we're asked to do, so it's going to take our ingenuity, our innovative spirit, our commitment to excellence, our willingness to change to be able to accomplish the mission and do it in a way that's world class," said General Looney. "How's that going to happen? It's going to happen through Continuous Process Improvement." 

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