CHARLESTON AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. –
Many of you remember when we went through the quality initiatives of the '90s with W. Edwards Deming's Total Quality Management. Those that remember the quality days may tell you horror stories of long meetings without decisions discussing powerpoint slides with graphs of useless statistics generated from mounds of paperwork.
Commanders proudly adorned the hallways outside their offices with charts showing quality improvements of just about anything anybody could measure. TQM taught us some important lessons -- know and understand your customers' needs, empower those below you, think strategically, seek continuous process improvement and eliminate waste. Although these were valuable lessons, it also taught us a lesson to be careful when adopting a management system that requires you to "feed the beast." TQM eventually fizzled out because it did not produce the desired results.
Ten years later, the Air Force adopted Lean, also known as Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century. Is Lean just the same car with a new coat of paint or just a new salesman? Will it gain traction and survive as senior leader advocates move to different jobs? Will we invest thousands of dollars to get green and black belt Lean warriors trained in the tenets of Lean thinking only to have it fizzle out like TQM? Will Lean turn into another "feed the beast" management system?
Lean is different but has some similarities with TQM. They both look at ways to improve processes and eliminate waste but that is where the similarities end. Lean is all about getting rid of waste in production, transportation, motion, waiting, processing, defects and inventory. The next time you see yourself waiting in line, making unnecessary trips somewhere or re-accomplishing a task that was not done right the first time, you've identified a process that probably has waste. How many times do we rewrite performance reports or awards and decorations before they go final? What must we do in order to get it right the first time, every time?
We must develop a passion for Lean thinking. We, at all ranks, must look for and identify waste in processes around us and come up with creative solutions to eliminate it. It is that simple and we're already producing valuable results all around Charleston AFB. With two hours of Lean training, a team of Charleston Airmen identified waste in the sequence of events that leads to a C-17 launch. They proposed and tested a Lean process that saves 1 hour and 45 minutes on every launch. Once implemented, this will have a huge impact across the AMC fleet. The 437th Maintenance Group similarly reduced waste by identifying "non-value added" steps maintainers take when receiving aerospace ground equipment and eliminated them. The 437th Aerial Port Squadron has revolutionized the way it trains new Airmen with "Port Dawg University." The list goes on.
The timing could not be more urgent. Lean thinking will give us the tools we need to mitigate the effects of the largest budget and personnel cuts I have seen in 22 years. Air Force leadership is behind this at the highest levels. Lean should not be just about reducing waste under shrinking budgets and workforce reductions. It is about making Charleston AFB a better place to work and live.
So will Lean stand the test of time? I say "yes." Lean is a mindset. It is a way of thinking. It is a passion. It is a way each of us can look for and identify ways to do things better. Once you catch the bug, you'll find yourself identifying waste in processes without even realizing it, as I did in our kitchen. While emptying out the dishwasher, I thought to myself ... wouldn't it be more efficient if we moved the dishes to the cabinet right above the dishwasher? One word of advice ... don't start messing around with Mom's kitchen. Her advice ... "go lean out your garage!"