Twitter
Facebook
The Armed Forces Europe Lean Six Sigma Community of Practice, a group comprised of performance improvement practitioners from across several commands and services, came together to talk about performance improvement during its first face-to-face meeting Sept. 19 at the Ramstein Community Center.
James Pauly, Regional Health Command Europe strategy and innovation director and LSS master black belt, described the CoP as an opportunity to share best practices.
“The whole point of the CoP is to share best business practices across organizations so that each organization can continue to improve,” Pauly said. “Improving our organizations’ processes makes the DoD more efficient and saves the government money.”
Pauly, who coordinated the meeting, said the group typically conducts a teleconference.
“This was the first time we have all come together face-to-face to discuss things such as what works for us, what we are doing and also learn more about what our colleagues are doing to manage their performance improvement programs,” Pauly said.
Represented in the group were RHCE, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, 21st Theater Sustainment Command, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, and Bavaria Medical Department Activity in Vilseck, Germany.
Pauly described the face-to-face meeting as a “collaborative Knowledge Management effort” which “highlights how each member organization conducts, manages, and injects Process Improvement throughout their organization, and to educate members on special topics.”
Richard Rhodes, Chief of Performance Improvement at LRMC, talked to the group about some of the ways they have used LSS to improve practices at the hospital. Examples include decreasing the wait time at the Emergency Room and standardizing the crash carts around the hospital.
Jeff Gilbert, 21st TSC operations research systems analyst and LSS MBB, emphasized how getting together to share ideas is extremely important and helpful.
“We all are dealing with similar challenges and concerns,” Gilbert said. “We all have different methods to deal with our challenges, so the only way to understand and improve is to look outside your organization. It’s really sharing ideas and sharing information.”
The group will continue to get together monthly and hopes to continue to share ideas, learn from each other and overall improve each of their organizations.
If you are a certified performance improvement/LSS practitioner and would like more information on this forum, contact Pauly at michael.j.pauly4.civ@mail.mil or Rhodes at richard.w.rhodes18.civ@mail.mil.
