Fort Bliss Monitor

Troop Talk

The Secretary of the Army has always had “business process revamping” as one of his major priorities. In order to do this he has encouraged the use of Lean Six Sigma techniques. This technique, which the business world has used successfully for some time, really takes a look at your process from a customer viewpoint.

Many of you probably think, “well that’s nothing startling,” but the power of the technique is to use the people who work the process day in and day out to oversee the revamping of the process.

For some time I have heard concerns about the Welcome Center here at Bliss. Not that the folks running it are not good, but that the waits are too long and that some of the briefings are redundant. So recently we decided to use Lean Six Sigma to examine our entire Welcome Center process from start to finish. This was not a small endeavor in that we inprocessed more than 650 new Soldiers in January, and the center provided services to another 4,000 people. Thankfully we had the help of some industry experts to guide us through this, but the results have been simply amazing to me.

The team tackled key issues such as: process, vision, mission, priorities, workflow, undesired effects, commitment and the improvement plan. They divided into three teams to assigned to three different areas, and as a result came up with the following recommendations: Evaluate briefings on contents and relevance, eliminate redundancy in briefs to reduce time, create an efficient schedule of events, reconfigure briefing days and eliminate one day of briefings, move the finance brief to day 1 (since it is critical for everyone) and to add a finance drop box for missing documents. Additionally the team eliminated day 5 of inprocessing by combining it with day 2, saving more than 5.5 hours. Finally we decided to add some computers to the Welcome Center and to add one counselor so as to reduce backlogs and wait time.

Ideally, to maximize effectiveness, we should move the entire complex to a larger facility, but that will have to wait until BRAC moves free up facilities on post. In the mean time, the Welcome Center team took matters into their own hands to fix troubled areas in their lane and to make significant improvements. To me this validated the Lean Six Sigma approach to improving organizations and processes. Even more important it validated in my mind what talented, dedicated people can do to make good things happen when we empower them to do so.

My challenge to everyone else is, who is next?

Brig. Gen. Robert P. Lennox
Fort Bliss Commanding General



www.bliss.army.mil	Published for the Fort Bliss/El Paso, Texas Community	April 13, 2006

	Troop Talk The Secretary of the Army has always had “business process revamping” as one of his major priorities. In order to do this he has encouraged the use of Lean Six Sigma techniques. This technique, which the business world has used successfully for some time, really takes a look at your process from a customer viewpoint. Many of you probably think, “well that’s nothing startling,” but the power of the technique is to use the people who work the process day in and day out to oversee the revamping of the process. For some time I have heard concerns about the Welcome Center here at Bliss. Not that the folks running it are not good, but that the waits are too long and that some of the briefings are redundant. So recently we decided to use Lean Six Sigma to examine our entire Welcome Center process from start to finish. This was not a small endeavor in that we inprocessed more than 650 new Soldiers in January, and the center provided services to another 4,000 people. Thankfully we had the help of some industry experts to guide us through this, but the results have been simply amazing to me. The team tackled key issues such as: process, vision, mission, priorities, workflow, undesired effects, commitment and the improvement plan. They divided into three teams to assigned to three different areas, and as a result came up with the following recommendations: Evaluate briefings on contents and relevance, eliminate redundancy in briefs to reduce time, create an efficient schedule of events, reconfigure briefing days and eliminate one day of briefings, move the finance brief to day 1 (since it is critical for everyone) and to add a finance drop box for missing documents. Additionally the team eliminated day 5 of inprocessing by combining it with day 2, saving more than 5.5 hours. Finally we decided to add some computers to the Welcome Center and to add one counselor so as to reduce backlogs and wait time. Ideally, to maximize effectiveness, we should move the entire complex to a larger facility, but that will have to wait until BRAC moves free up facilities on post. In the mean time, the Welcome Center team took matters into their own hands to fix troubled areas in their lane and to make significant improvements. To me this validated the Lean Six Sigma approach to improving organizations and processes. Even more important it validated in my mind what talented, dedicated people can do to make good things happen when we empower them to do so. My challenge to everyone else is, who is next? Brig. Gen. Robert P. Lennox Fort Bliss Commanding General