Article 34. DOD Should Implement Enterprise Lean NOW!

By Lawrence Rosier Principal Management Consultant

The DOD should implement Enterprise Lean (aka Toyota’s TPS) in all civilian offices Now!  Here is why. The process immediately focuses employees on how their jobs can be done better.  The process organizes employees into Functional Lean Teams that study how to improve each function performed by the Team.
The teams are organized and supported by Lean facilitators who have been trained in the Lean process by US Army Lean Six Sigma internal consultants.  I suggest that Facilitators can be found available in Human Resource Departments because the DOD has a hiring freeze.  

Implementation of the Team Management Organization
I further suggest that all DOD civilian employees be reorganized from the current Bureaucratic organization into a permanent Team Management organization based on the Functional Lean Teams.  Each Functional Lean Team would elect its own leader by secret ballot.   Cross training would begin immediately with each employee knowing how to do at least one other job this eliminates employees waiting on other employees to do their jobs and improves efficiency.  

Enterprise Lean Implementation
The Enterprise Lean project would be kicked off with mass training provided by the US Army’s Lean Six Sigma internal consultants.  The training would concentrate on the Value Stream Mapping tool (VSM).  The Functional Lean Teams would meet for one hour each week to do the VSM study.  Each Functional Lean Team would use the VSM tool to find the best way to perform the function (the most efficient and effective way).  One way of doing this is to tape each step of the function on brown wrapping paper taped to the conference room walls.  I suggest that the current method be done first followed by the improved method to determine savings in expenses and man hours. 

All of the above work can be done without the expenditure of any funds for outside consultants.  The next steps will require at least one outside consultant to train GAO Budget Analysts in how to cost out the VSM data, implement right-sizing and build a bottoms-up budgeting database.

GAO Budget Analysts
I further recommend that GAO Budget Analysts be brought in to collect and document the improved methods expenses and man hours on spread sheets.  This will become the basis for right-sizing (makes sure each employee has a full time job) the functions within the department.  Employees who do not have a job will become redundant.  The GAO would be the custodians of the VSM functional expenses and labor costs storing the data in a new database which will eventually become a bottoms-up Budget. A bottoms-up budget would make the expense and labor cost of each function transparent to all who need and use budget data.  The GAO would also be responsible for maintenance of all the Federal Government’s bottoms-up budget databases.