From left, Col. Michael Pelletier, 555th Aircraft Sustainment Squadron commander; Col. James Fulton, 727th Aircraft Sustainment Group commander; DeLana Aylor, 448th Combat Sustainment Wing financial management; and Ernie Guttery, 76th Maintenance Support Group, discuss their project to standardize the process and reduce the time required for organizational change request packages during a green belt class breakout session. (U.S. Air Force photo)

(Tinker Air Force Base: Oklahoma)  -- The commander for Air Force Materiel Command, Gen. Bruce Carlson, has said that Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century is a mindset and a change in behavior.

Six Sigma Green Belt training instructor Michael Kakhta says the concepts are basic.

"We are going back to classic functions of what makes a business work," he says. "We are fixing processes; they already know how to fix parts."

Green Belt training develops individuals to lead process improvements. The training also teaches participants to effectively use tools such as Six Sigma, a method to eliminate variation and standardize a process and lean initiatives designed to eliminate waste or non-value added steps from a process.

The training emphasizes a data-driven approach to problem solving using several key concepts like value stream mapping, a tool used to identify all steps of a process and the time it takes to complete those steps; cause and effect analysis and basic statistics.

"Our job as leaders and managers is to remove barriers so our guys can be productive," says Wade Wolfe, chief of transformation, integration and process improvements for plans and programs.

The training consists of 14 classes during a four-month period during which participants, working in teams of four, apply the skills they’ve learned by working on a real-world project. The average project time is 40 to 50 hours outside the classroom in addition to regular duties.

Maj. Gen. Loren Reno, OC-ALC commander, and the senior leaders that are participating in the current green belt training, tackled a variety of problems.

General Reno’s team was tasked with reducing the time of preparing read-ahead materials. On average, it took the team more than 11 hours to produce the read-ahead material per day. Using statistical data, the team developed a plan to reduce the time to four hours by making the process electronic.

By eliminating the paper process, officials project savings for toner and paper at $1,200 a year. The team also found it was quicker and easier to make corrections electronically than on paper.

Wolfe says the process improvements and Green Belt projects don’t have to save millions of dollars, but make a process more effective and efficient.

"It’s not one project that saves a million dollars, it’s a million projects that save one dollar," Wolfe says.

He says the goal of the Green Belt training class is not to charter a formal project for every improvement, but to get people to automatically think about how they can improve things.

"Eventually, the culture will be engrained into their minds," Wolfe says.

He adds that the next class will consist of an equal amount of supervisors and nonsupervisors as the focus begins to shift to nonleadership positions.

For more information, visit www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123079510