FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. –
The Pa. National Guard and Department of Military and Veteran Affairs (DMVA) recently held two Lean Six Sigma (LSS) courses here for members of their organizations and other commonwealth agencies.
The first was a Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Course, conducted on November 14, which offered an introduction to the LSS collaborative, scientific approach to problem solving and how one can actively contribute to improvement teams within their work place.
The second was a LSS Senior Leaders Course, conducted on November 19, which showed leaders how using LSS process improvement efforts within their commands or organizations can help achieve measurable gains in performance-based budgeting.
The PA Guard hosted its first LSS class in 2014 and DMVA started adding seats to the classes in in 2017. In 2018, they started offering unfilled seats in their LSS classes to other commonwealth agencies as part of Governor Tom Wolf’s Lean Initiative.
“Part of the LSS process is to break down silos and what better way to do that then to integrate multiple agencies into the training,” said Beth Andreoli from the Governor’s Office of Performance Through Excellence. “Agencies would remised to not take advantage of this opportunity.”
New this year, a partnership with PennState Schuylkill provides official certificates to people completing the Guard and DMVA LSS courses.
Air Force Maj. Kathleen Fabrizi serves as the director of Continuous Process Improvement, Innovation and Leadership with the Pa. National Guard and is a certified LSS master black belt. Fabrizi stated that both the military and government had a lot of room for improvement and the LSS methodology can help realize those improvements. “In the military, we are really good at conducting successful operations but we are not really effective at the day-to-day business side of things.”
Scot Albert is the director of transformation and Lean lead for the DMVA and is a certified LSS black belt. Albert emphasized the need for both executive and project champions to lead, empower and resource LSS teams. “Our green belt and black belt projects cannot find successful improvement without their leadership’s active involvement.”
The next two yellow belt courses will be conducted at the 171st Wing in Pittsburgh, January 6th and 7th. All DoD, National Guard, DMVA and Commonwealth employees can register at no cost.
Jan 6, 2020 Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/83383639711
Jan 7, 2020 Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/83389980677
The next, week-long, LSS green belt course is being planned for the Spring of 2020. That course prepares individuals to develop and lead their first LSS project