LEAPS AHEAD
B
usiness transformation ini- tiatives within the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and
Technology (ASAALT), aimed at in- creasing process efficiencies, improving quality, and achieving significant cost savings and cost avoidance, gained service- and DoD-wide distinction Nov. 29, 2011, at a Pentagon Lean Six Sigma Excellence Award Program (LEAP) ceremony.
The ASAALT team received an HQDA Level Organizational Deployment Award for outstanding achievement of excep- tional process improvement; Program Executive Office Ammunition (PEO Ammo) won the AR10-87 Level Orga- nizational Deployment Award; and PEO
FASTER FIELDING
PEO Aviation’s effort to quickly field Raven unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) was an LSS project that contributed to the Army’s cost sav- ings and cost avoidance. Here, SPC Randall C. Stone, Raven operator with the 1-148th Infantry Regiment, 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, launches a Raven UAS during training at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA, Dec. 9, 2011. (Photo by SGT Kimberly Lamb.)
Combat Support and Combat Service Support’s Project Manager Joint Combat Support Systems won an Enterprise Level Project Team Award for Special Tools Accountability, recognizing the team’s achievement of $92 million in financial benefits and significant operational ben- efits for maintainers.
“These awards recognize the work that has resulted in real savings and getting busi- ness processes to produce much better. The challenges we face over the next few years are pretty significant, so we need to get our business processes better aligned to gain greater efficiencies, employ best practices, and gain lessons learned. Future managers will benefit from their success,” said Under Secretary of the Army Dr. Joseph W. Westphal.
SAVINGS AND AVOIDANCE Overall, ASAALT has been able to docu- ment $19.4 billion in cost savings and cost avoidance for FY11, broken down as $9 billion in savings and $10.4 billion in cost avoidance, said Dr. Nancy A. Moulton, Director for Business Transformation in the Office of the ASAALT (OASAALT).
“We’ve been able to transform our process and achieve high-level results. We’ve doubled our quality in terms of process output, and we have improved the speed of our processes by a range of 30 to 90 percent. We’ve significantly improved quality, increased speed, and reduced cost,” said Moulton.
The bulk of the savings and cost avoid- ance achieved in FY11 can be directly attributed to the Better Buying Power program spearheaded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Better Buying Power is a DoD-wide effort to increase efficiency throughout the acqui- sition process by building affordability measures into the structure of programs,
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increasing competition, improving pro- ductivity, and lowering costs wherever possible, Moulton explained.
“You can’t improve and have savings with- out fully understanding the processes involved. You have to understand who influences which parts of the process and see what part you play in the process,” said Lee Thompson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Strategy and Performance Planning.
In total, $18.5 of the $19.4 billion in sav- ings and cost avoidance was achieved as a result of the implementation of Better Buying Power practices.
“Better Buying Power is definitely gener- ating unprecedented results. Leadership is driving specific actions that are getting done. There is emphasis from OSD, the Army, OASAALT, and Ms. [Heidi] Shyu, Acting ASAALT. Leaders have provided specific targets, which were set—such as the goal of achieving 3 percent effi- ciency each year. This focus on results and leadership engagement, combined with workforce proficiency in continuous improvement, united the whole organiza- tion,” Moulton said.
Army business transformation efforts have been improved through use of a single, central repository designed to document all Army efficiencies, business initiatives, and other quality improve- ments. It is an information system known as PowerSteering.
EXEMPLARY EFFORTS Individual PEOs contributed substan- tially to ASAALT’s overall achievements by implementing Better Buying Power measures to improve the business manage- ment of acquisition programs, eliminate redundancies where possible, and maxi- mize efficiency throughout groups of
Army AL&T Magazine
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