Fort Benning Department Looks to Lean Six Sigma for Efficiency

Another Army department is turning to Lean Six Sigma to improve efficiency. The Bayonet & Saber, the publication at Fort Benning, Georgia, announced recently that twelve employees from the Directorate of Training and Doctrine (DOTD) were undergoing training to earn their Lean Six Sigma green belts.

According to the DOTD deputy director at the post’s Maneuver Center of Excellence, Jay Brimstin, one of the main goals of the training is to provide the employees with a better way to assess how they do things. He added that Lean Six Sigma is a way to look at the directorate’s internal processes and figure out how to make them more efficient, while at the same time providing professional development opportunities for the personnel.

Lean Six Sigma has been implemented in a number of departments in the Army. In July, the Army honored its 2013 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Awards Program winners, stating that the methodology enables the military to make more effective use of taxpayer dollars while better serving soldiers and their families. The winners included the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs)/ Deputy Chief of Staff, which used Lean Six Sigma on 24 projects, resulting in $42.4 million, or about 3.3 percent of the organization’s total budget. Another award recipient, the Army Material Command, completed 717 projects in 2013, amounting to $87.7 million in financial benefits.

Lean Six Sigma benefits the Army in the way it benefits business: through increased efficiency, reduced waste, and better service.