The use of value-stream mapping recently helped the U.S. Navy improve its acquisition processes.

The value-stream map was produced by some of the Navy’s top lean Six Sigma practitioners at a kaizen competition designed to improve the Navy’s complex justification and approval (J&A) process. J&As are common throughout the Navy’s NAVAIR administration, with more than 480 performed this fiscal year. They affect every contract specialist in the NAVAIR business unit. The value-stream map revealed that the J&A process had 26 steps and 17 rework loops, and that the cycle time was anywhere from 27.75 days to 129 days. The creation of a new template for the process will reduce the required steps in the process, eliminate the rework loops and reduce the cycle time to 16–40.5 days.

“I suspect there will also be additional savings in workload reduction in other functional areas that were not taken into account in this measurement,” says Lt. Cmdr. Chris Camacho, a Black Belt.

Joan Devlin, a NAVAIR AIRSpeed Black Belt, reports that the administration will use the templated J&A process as a pilot project and evaluate its effects for further improvement.

For more information, visit www.dcmilitary.com.

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