Three DLA Land and Maritime associates earn top Lean Six Sigma certifications

COLUMBUS, Ohio -

Three Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime associates have risen to the top of the DLA Continuous Process Improvement ladder after receiving Lean Six Sigma Black Belt honors earlier this month.

"It is the pinnacle for me and what I have been striving for my whole career," said Michael Lanning, the DLA Land and Maritime Continuous Process Improvement branch chief, who earned his Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification through a training program facilitated by DLA Transformation.

Earning the Master Black Belt distinction is the farthest one can go in the Lean Six Sigma program and is a significant milestone in any career, indicating a high level of expertise in process improvement and waste reduction, he said.

Additionally, Weapon System Support Manager Aaron Moore and Lean Six Sigma Analyst Bonny Haynes achieved top honors by earning their Black Belts through the program.

"This achievement highlights their dedication to improving efficiency and effectiveness within their roles at DLA," Lanning said of Haynes and Moore.

Lean Six Sigma is a data-driven methodology used by DLA to facilitate CPI by improving efficiencies, eliminating waste, reducing variability, and enhancing reliability through systematic process improvement and innovative program management with the goal of enhancing warfighter support, Lanning explained.

"The hallmark of Lean Six Sigma and CPI is rooting out problems that are often hiding beneath the surface and are not easy to see," Lanning said. "It offers a way to see every aspect of a process, digging deep down, finding root causes and making improvements resulting in positive outcomes."

Lanning said he started his Lean Six Sigma journey when he was encouraged by a colleague to try it early on in his career at DLA Land and Maritime.

"It sounded like something that I was wired to do, because I was always questioning why we were doing things which didn't make any sense," Lanning said.

Lean Six Sigma offered an outlet for his curiosity and in 2009, he said he changed the path of his career by signing up for a Green Belt course offered locally at DLA Land and Maritime.

"Everyone in the course was a GS-15," he recalled. "I was in there with the deputy commander, directors and deputy directors. And then there was me, a GS-7 resolution specialist. It was quite intimidating."

"Once I got into it, I felt like I had come home," he said. "And here I am 15 years later, the first Master Black Belt trained completely within the DLA Lean Six Sigma program."

The DLA Lean Six Sigma program differs from its civilian counterparts by offering Green, Black, and Master Black Belt certifications, whereas civilian programs typically include White, Yellow, Green, Black, and Master Black Belts.

Lanning explained that the program at DLA Land and Maritime adopts a ground-up approach and is designed to give non-supervisory personnel the chance to step outside their comfort zones and lead a team on projects that not only impact their own areas but also benefit the entire organization.

"Lean Six Sigma is giving your employees a voice, a way to make an impact on something greater than themselves above and beyond the day to day," he said.

Black Belt certification is earned after three weeks of training and leading two process improvement projects that have quantifiable returns, Lanning explained. Master Black Belt goes a little deeper by requiring candidates to lead at least five projects and coach five Black Belt candidates with both levels requiring a three-year waiting period in between.

"Lean Six Sigma is not done in a vacuum," Lanning said. "It is a collaborative process in which the Green and Black Belt candidates mentor each other and lead teams to optimize processes that we do every day."

Haynes agreed.

"By mentoring and supporting our DLA Land and Maritime Green Belt practitioners, I help them navigate their journey from initial training through to certification, ensuring they have the knowledge and confidence to lead successful projects throughout DLA," she said.

Haynes said her two Black Belt projects focused in on people and processes. She advocated for Deaf employees by coaching a Deaf Green Belt candidate in the development of a new scheduling tool for the American Sign Language Interpreter Request System and the addition of two staff interpreters to alleviate a consistent backlog in scheduling interpreters.

"These efforts on the part of the Green Belt candidate's team led to an 80% reduction in the time required to secure interpreting services, significantly enhancing the DLA Deaf culture," Haynes said.

The other project she was involved with was in leading a process team to cut the number of delinquent Non-NSN FedMall orders by 80%, resulting in direct cost-savings of $1.3 million for DLA Land and Maritime.

"Applying Black Belt expertise to my daily work is seamless," she said of her experiences in the Lean Six Sigma program. "I'm now leveraging the advanced techniques I've mastered to identify and resolve inefficiencies in DLA's processes."

One of Moore's projects involved fixing a disposition process where thousands of items were held up in their proper disposition for 60 days or more, Lanning explained.

Moore employed the use of a specific disposition code to alleviate DEMIL A items being marked for destruction by mistake, lowering the touches on each item and improving turnaround times to about one day. DEMIL A items are those that can be resold and repurposed by city governments, police departments, and similar entities.

"The change resulted in the savings of millions of dollars through reduced production time and more items being offered in the military sales marketplace," Lanning said.

Lanning said Moore went above and beyond by tackling a complex process design problem involving enhancing the vendor restitution process. Over a two-year period, he collaborated with DLA Contracting, DLA Finance, DLA Legal, the Defense Finance and Accounting Agency and others to prevent vendor payments from being misdirected to the U.S. Treasury instead of DLA.

"This project made a huge impact on the Agency's bottom line," Lanning said.

Moore said he started Lean Six Sigma when he was a part of Lanning's team and applies what he learned in his two Black Belt projects to his daily work processes as a weapon system support manager.

"I utilize my Lean Six Sigma skills to identify problems, use data driven methods to help understand the impact of what is happening, locate root causes and provide innovative solutions," Moore said.

Lanning said the Lean Six Sigma program is open to everyone and encourages associates to try it out by signing up for one of the Green Belt courses DLA Land and Maritime offers twice a year.

"Lean Six Sigma is like a calling," Lanning said. "The people who come to me and want to be certified aren't doing it for formal credit or anything else, they are doing it because they want to make this organization better. They see the problems that we have, and they want to be part of the solution."

­"These projects really make a huge positive impact, which is why the Lean Six Sigma program is vital to transformation here at DLA Land and Maritime," Lanning added.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.