Green Belt training program accentuates AFSO21 initiatives

  • Published
  • By Karen Costura
  • Electronic Systems Center Public Affairs
Hanscom Air Force Base --  The Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century initiative has already resulted in thousands of dollars in savings for Hanscom. Now the Electronics Systems Center Plans and Programs Office is offering a training program that will help offices further identify waste and produce efficiencies in the workplace.

The ESC Plans and Programs Office issued a Senior Officer Communication and Coordination Electronic Resource tasking in September asking its wings and functional offices to choose representatives from their offices to participate in the Lean-Six Sigma Green Belt two-week training program.

"The Green Belt project management program is the first level in the Lean-Six Sigma series," said Preskella Gindi, an AFSO21 team member and Plans and Programs Office project manager. "This beginner's course is designed to provide participants with process improvement training to execute the Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century initiative without overtaxing center resources."

"These individuals can then bring into their offices the techniques they've learned in the classroom," she said. "It's an invaluable AFSO21-related program that will help these newly-trained Green Belts to identify areas in their own offices where costs can be cut, processes streamlined and the customer's quality of service improved."

The first week of the program, which was held from Oct. 23 to 27, was conducted by Maj. Robert Enrico, an Air Force reservist in the Plans and Programs Office, who works as a civilian at the Honeywell Corporation. During this initial phase of training, Major Enrico, an AFSO21 expert and certified Lean-Six Sigma Black Belt, focused on the basics behind the Green Belt program, introducing concepts such as waste elimination, organizational change management and process improvement tools.

"Participants were required to come into the training with a process improvement project to which they could apply the skills they were learning in class," Major Enrico said. "We had quite a few hands-on exercises which enabled these prospective Green Belts to see how the concepts and tools they were studying directly applied to issues in their own offices."

The second week of training, which was conducted Monday to Thursday, was led by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lean Aerospace Initiative.
"During the second week, the MIT-LAI team will be conducting a simulation to provide hands-on Lean and Process Improvement training to illustrate some of the major concepts and principles learned in the first week," Major Enrico said.

Once initial training is completed, the Green Belts will be mentored by a Black Belt AFSO21 specialist through a mission-related Rapid Improvement Event project.

Green Belts are then required to facilitate additional Rapid Improvement Events, apply Lean-thinking Six Sigma tools toward "just-do-it" problems, and spread the knowledge of the tools to others in the organization.

"These Green Belt trainees are really going to be an indispensable resource for their organizations," Major Enrico said.

The Plans and Programs Office hopes to sponsor many more Green Belt training sessions, and plans to ultimately add other Lean-Six Sigma courses to the agenda.

"We hope that this will be an on-going program," Ms. Gindi said. "We'd like to train as many people as possible for not only Green Belt training, but the higher levels of Six Sigma training as well. Eventually, we'd like to train people for Black Belt certification so they could take on ESC lean-thinking projects on a larger scale."