Lean Six Sigma

Written by Dawn S. Onley

Employees feared the worse: that they would see Letterkenny on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list that year.

That’s when Letterkenny developed its burning platform, according to Colonel Robert Swenson, depot commander.

“You’ve got to have a burning platform and a reason to change,” said Swenson. “If you’re standing on a burning platform, you’re going to move or you’re going to fall through and die. Our burning platform was everybody was convinced that Letterkenny was going to close in the 2005 BRAC.”

But Letterkenny survived the latest BRAC. In large part, Letterkenny’s saving grace was a methodology for continuous process improvement known as Lean Six Sigma—the same methodology that saved Red River Army Depot, Texas, from BRAC closure, although unlike Letterkenny, Red River actually was listed by the BRAC Commission as a depot slated to shut down.

Lean Six Sigma is a set of principles and practices that first took root in automotive manufacturing, with Toyota Motor Corporation, and in the semi-conductor industry several decades ago. Lean concentrates on increasing speed and flow while eliminating waste. Six Sigma is more focused on improving the effectiveness of processes and on eliminating defects by reducing the variations in processes.

In 2004, when General Benjamin Griffin came to the Army Materiel Command as its commander, AMC deployed both Lean and Six Sigma with varying results. Griffin linked the two together, according to Darlene Paukei, AMC’s director of Lean Six Sigma.

In 2005, a policy memo was put out mandating that the Army deploy Lean Six Sigma. So, AMC became more familiar with the concepts and had some employees undergo training to learn the tools and how to apply them across the command. “It’s the fusion of two philosophies of efficiency,” said Paukei. “Right now, Lean Six Sigma is fully deployed AMC-wide. We’re growing our own resources. We want to become self-sufficient in the next 18 months.”

“This is where AMC needed to go. We weren’t as productive as we could be,” Paukei explained.

Griffin says AMC saved $235 million last year applying Lean Six Sigma, up from $110 million in fiscal year 2005.

A huge success at Letterkenny, Lean Six Sigma is attributed to helping to restore the Patriot missile system to its former, pre-Operation Iraqi Freedom war glory. The system was used so frequently during the early portions of the war, detecting and shooting down enemy missiles, that the batteries took a beating from the extreme and harsh weather conditions and environments. The batteries are the firing mechanism on the Patriot missile and include a phased-array radar set, control station, computers, power-generated equipment and launchers.

Letterkenny, working with experts from the Lower Tier Project Office of the Army Aviation and Missile Command’s Integrated Materiel Management Center at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, developed and led the Patriot Recapitalization Plan, which was designed to reset and restore the Patriot Missile batteries by making them fully operational again. The work involved repairing and/or replacing battery components and then integrating and testing the equipment to assure the parts were mission-capable.

The results of the reset have been nothing short of phenomenal. Through the deployment of Lean Six Sigma, Letterkenny:

• Reduced labor hours by 23,334 per year
• Saved the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command $11.9 million in savings Redeployed two dozen people to other functions
• Eliminated 1,155 miles per year in travel
• Freed 64,000 square feet of floor space

In fact, the results were so impressive that they caught the attention of the Board of Governors for the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing, which is known as the Nobel Prize of manufacturing. The Shingo Prize was established in 1988 to recognize and honor private companies for effectively applying Lean manufacturing concepts. In 2005, the prize was opened up to the government sector and Letterkenny scored big.

“The reason I compete is because you get better through competition,” Swenson said.

Letterkenny, and the other depots, have had other successes with applying Lean Six Sigma as well. The depot customized a High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) for the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which resulted in increased capacity and reduced costs.

And, by January 2006, Letterkenny had stopped losing money on the rebuilt Humvees; by August 2006, Letterkenny was realizing a drastic reduction in the per-vehicle faults (from 54 to 3) and a 40 percent decrease in repair time.

The same was true with the generator business, due to Lean Six Sigma. In June 2006, Letterkenny was producing 100 generators a month. This past June, that number had risen to 675 generators.

“The before and after pictures are extremely telling,” said Swenson. “The generator shop changes from week to week and that’s visible.” Still, it’s never easy changing the culture of a place and getting people to try something new, Swenson said.

This reminds him of a quote, by Steve McMenamin of the Atlantic Systems Guild, he keeps on his desk: “People hate change … and that is because people hate change. I want to be sure that you get my point, people really hate change, they really, really do.”

Paukei said the AMC challenges have been more at the director or division chief level and it boils down to time. It takes roughly four to six months to become trained and to complete a Lean Six Sigma process, and this takes away precious personnel.

“They haven’t seen the immediate benefits of it so it’s a resource issue,” Paukei said. “In the field, they really embrace it.”

The breakdown at Letterkenny is roughly 1,300 government civilian employees, 800 contractors, 30 Reservists and three active-duty military, including Swenson. Comprising over 17,500 acres, a large land portion of the depot is used to conduct maintenance, modification, storage and demilitarization operations on tactical missiles and ammunition. Letterkenny, one of five maintenance depots, is under the command structure of AMCOM, a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command. “Letterkenny was the first of our depots to win that Shingo Award so you’ll see techniques very similar to what you see in the most efficient production facilities in the private sector,” said Griffin. “I’m very proud of the work force that we have. They’ve seen the benefits of this Lean Six Sigma.” ♦