The Army Recognizes Special Warriors

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, contact:

Washington, D.C. (December 17, 2009) – The Army has trained and developed a new breed of elite warrior who is earning battlefield plaudits and recognition.

This new breed of elite warrior operates worldwide and is engaged still in mortal combat. They are tasked with combating a determined and implacable foe: the Army and Pentagon bureaucracy, which has long been the bane of this, the world’s greatest fighting force. And, Army officials announced last week, this new breed of warrior is achieving spectacular battlefield success.

I refer, of course, to the Army’s new cadre of trained and certified Lean Six Sigma (LSS) practitioners, many of whom were honored recently by the Secretary of the Army (SA) and the Chief of Staff, Army (CSA) Lean Six Sigma Excellence (LEAP) awards ceremony, which was held in the Hall of heroes at the Pentagon and hosted by Lieutenant General Robert Durbin and Ms. Joyce Morrow. The LSS LEAP Award Program intent is to recognize the outstanding contributions to the Lean Six Sigma Program, but with a stronger focus to the benefits within the Army business processes.

Durbin directs the Army’s Enterprise Task Force, which is charged with effecting the transformation of the Army’s bureaucratic processes and procedures. Morrow is the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army and Acting Deputy Under Secretary of the Army.

“Collectively, the Lean Six Sigma community has completed nearly 5,000 projects [at a cost savings of] almost $14 billion,” Durbin said. This “simply could not have been achieved without the experience and know-how of this esteemed group.”

This esteemed group included nearly two dozen Army soldiers and civilians at 11 different Army commands, all of whom were recognized in this the 2nd Annual Lean Six Sigma Excellence Awards Ceremony. (See Table 1 for a detailed list of the awardees and their accomplishments.)

“Lean Six Sigma professionals like yourselves are providing the innovation, business savvy, and continuous drive to improve the way the Army operates,” Durbin said.

“Since June 2006,” he added, the Army has trained “more than 1,450 senior leaders in Lean Six Sigma” and commissioned 151 Master Black Belts, 1,805 Black Belts, and 4,603 Green Belts. This new breed of elite warrior is currently engaged in more than 1,800 projects, Durbin said.

Lean Six Sigma is a concept that American manufacturer, service, and healthcare industries have successfully pioneered and adopted to achieve a continuous process improvement in all areas of the business. The objective is to utilize a data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects and variation reduction from product to service. As a large, multifaceted and geographically diffuse enterprise, the Army has embraced Lean Six Sigma. This will make more cost-effective use of taxpayer dollars while better serving Soldiers and their families.

When the Army embraced Lean Six Sigma five years ago, Durbin said, it “understood that comprehensive transformation of the Army would demand a revolutionary program. We knew that we needed a trained and mature team who understood the Army, and who could apply critical thinking skills in a disciplined fashion to help the Army overcome the complexities of our organization.”

The Army’s Lean Six Sigma initiative has since grown and intensified in conjunction with the service’s heightened operational tempo caused by the need for ongoing troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, that’s why the Army commissioned Durbin’s Enterprise Task Force: to transform the service’s bureaucratic processes and procedures such that they could keep pace with escalating wartime demands.

“Operational units are built, trained, deployed, and returned to home at an unprecedented pace,” Durbin said. “So just doing the same old processes… faster to keep up with demand isn’t the answer. We must profoundly change how we operate and how we generate forces.”

This is a daunting challenge; however, Durbin said, “the Lean Six Sigma program is no longer a small effort operating within the Army.” In fact, Lean Six Sigma has been elevated to an enterprise- or Army-wide program which “has earned the recognition of senior Army leaders.”

“Many organizations have engaged in enterprise projects,” Durbin said, “and more organizations are expected to engage as our Lean Six Sigma deployment continues to mature.” For example, he noted, the Army’s Materiel Enterprise alone has chartered 43 enterprise-level projects.