Materiel Command officer leading the Lean way
By Beth E. Musselman
Army Materiel Command
Maj. Tracy Pennycuick describes the projects she completed to earn her Lean Six Sigma black belt certification.(Photo, Alicia Sehring)
Lean Six Sigma
Lean Six Sigma is an Army-wide business transformation centered on re-engineering business processes. It is designed to take work out and improve cycle time.
Ultimately, it will lead to more efficient production that frees resources that can be used to better support the warfighting side of the Army, Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey said.
Lean Six Sigma formed from two independently-developed improvement tools. Lean is an outgrowth of the Toyota production system, and focuses on increasing efficiency and reducing cycle time by the elimination of waste.
Six Sigma was developed by Motorola beginning in the 1970s as an approach to improving quality and effectiveness through statistical control. Its roots go back more than 150 years to a Prussian mathematician who introduced the concept of the normal curve.
Together, Lean and Six Sigma are powerful tools in transforming organizations, Army Materiel Command officials said. Lean Six Sigma enables a culture of innovation that continuously listens to customers, questions the status quo, and improves results through fact-based decisions.
The Lean Six Sigma mentality is quickly spreading through the Army. At Headquarters, Army Materiel Command, where Lean began, several individuals have committed themselves to becoming part of this process.
But none more than Maj. Tracy Pennycuick. Recently certified as a LSS black belt, Pennycuick was HQAMC’s first uniformed black belt, and only the sixth recipient of the prestigious ranking.
Pennycuick began the program as many would. She was the executive officer for Greg Kee, deputy chief of staff, strategic plans and policy, and heard of a “management tool”course being offered. As a small business owner, she thought the
course would be useful.
The one-week class was the Lean Six Sigma green belt course, an introduction to the philosophy. Once the course was complete, Pennycuick returned to her normal
duties and immediately began to notice areas that could be more efficient. The class had opened her eyes to the many possible applications of LSS.
Pennycuick appreciated the business aspect of LSS. “I liked the fact that it was applying business tools and process,” she said. She then decided she would
continue the training.
Since LSS is an ongoing effort to reduce waste throughout every process, once one level is completed, one is challenged to move up to the next. Upon receiving green belt status, the next step is black belt and then master black belt.
Black belt status is difficult to obtain. The intense process involves training courses spread out, one week at a time, over six months. During this time, the trainee is tasked with finding a current process or issue and leading a team to develop an improved version. Those wishing to go all the way may consider master black belt, which includes training and mentoring up-and-coming LSS participants.
When it came time for Pennycuick to begin her project, she drew from her everyday work experience and quickly found room for improvement in the command’s tasker system. The process was very slow, with duplication of efforts and lots of time wasted on back-and-forth e-mails. The drawn-out process often ended in inadequate responses, which had to be redone. The tasker process was the perfect candidate, said Pennycuick.
Pennycuick put together a working group and they began streamlining and automating the process. The goal was to provide a better quality product to the requester as quick as possible and with ongoing visibility. The recommended changes were put into effect and are estimated to decrease completion time 40 percent and the number of taskers that must be redone by 25 percent. The command is currently seeking funding to purchase computer software that will support the new process.
So with that project complete, Pennycuick had fulfilled her black belt requirements, but she didn’t stop there. As if being a mother of four, an XO and working on one LSS project wasn’t enough, Pennycuick decided she wanted to take on another. She found holes in the way AMC accounted for contractors on the battlefield and knew this would be a perfect LSS project.
According to Pennycuick, contractor accountability on the battlefield was spotty at best. DoD and non-DoD contractors were entering, leaving and traveling through Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait without a clear tracking process or accountability. Although the Aerial Ports of Debarkation capture contractor data, they are not strategically placed on the battlefield and therefore leave huge gaps.
Current accountability procedures varied by command and subcommand, so the policies often competed. Since it wasn’t clear who owned the contractors, no one was on the hook to enforce policy. In November 2005, Pennycuick made a six-week trip to the Southwest Asia region to identify these gaps and recommend improvements.
Pennycuick focused on tracking contractors by the way they move, cross checking references and clearances in different systems, and verifying their information. The new system would provide better security and allow the proper company to be billed when contractors incurred expenses.
Pennycuick also found that standardizing forms and procedures allowed contractor control cells to become modular and shift as needed with the Army. Memorandums of Agreement with rotary wing and Army fixed wing have increased AMC visibility over contractor inter-theater movement by 70 percent.
The Government Accountability Office recently visited AMC operations in theater and were impressed with all the progress that has been made on such a limited budget, said Pennycuick. AMC has been supporting the contractor accountability on the battlefield mission without funding or assistance; however, the GAO’s recommendations may help with that.
Because of the extensive improvements made, AMC’s contractor accountability program may soon be the standard for DoD.
Currently, AMC is the only DoD agency tracking contractor accountability.
With so many great improvements made, Maj. Pennycuick could sit back and relax knowing she has done her duty. But that’s not going to happen. Pennycuick has recently made the move to one of AMC’s major subordinate commands, the Research, Development and Engineering Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., to implement LSS on a command level.
As a direct result of her great achievements at AMC, Pennycuick is now helping others learn and implement the Lean Six Sigma philosophies. She plans on continuing down the LSS path to master black belt and looks forward to doing more projects.
“I want to do more in direct support of Soldiers. My personal objective is to get the best equipment to the Soldier on the ground as fast as humanly possible,” she said.
The LSS mentality is spreading throughout the Army. Secretary of the Army, Dr. Francis J. Harvey recently stated LSS will be implemented Army-wide, streamlining operations from the depots all the way up to the Department of the Army.
Lean Six Sigma is the future of the Army and people like Pennycuick are leading the way. To find out how you can participate in Lean Six Sigma, visit www.amc.army.mil/lean or see your local Lean Six Sigma representative.
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