Command tasking process gets "quick win" Published March 16, 2006 By Capt. Paul Baldwin Air Force Materiel Command Public Affairs WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- The way Air Force Materiel Command delegates and tracks suspenses just received an upgrade thanks to people from across the command who met here during a Lean event March 6 -10 to improve the tasking process. When Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century kicked off in AFMC, the tasking process was immediately identified as a prime candidate for a "quick win." AFMC tracks more than 13,000 taskings annually and the process is time consuming, especially for new people using the system, officials said. As a result, taskings were often returned late. When a tasking should have only taken a short period of time to process, it sometimes took days to get to the action officer. Moreover, high-priority and emergency items, or Tier 1 taskers, were completed approximately 60 percent on time. To fix the problems, representatives from across AFMC gathered to analyze the tasking process. The initiative was part of AFMC Commander Gen. Bruce Carlson's focus on continuous process improvement through AFSO21. "General Carlson wants people across the command to contribute to AFSO 21 improvements, especially when those improvements would have command-wide benefits." said Col. Bruce A. Litchfield, AFMC chief of staff and team sponsor. The week-long event, called the Rapid Improvement Event, included help from two experienced Lean facilitators, Tom Perdue and Greg Saunders, both from the headquarters transformation office, or A5D. The Lean facilitators taught just-in-time Lean concepts that gave the team ways to improve the tasking process and make it more efficient. Mr. Saunders has worked with Lean concepts for several years and Mr. Perdue has facilitated more than 60 process improvement events. "Lean, one of the components of AFSO21, is the philosophy and ongoing effort to reduce waste throughout every process," said Maj. Joey Stengell of the AFMC chief of staff office and team leader for the event. "Waste elimination equates to increased process speed." Colonel Litchfield gave specific goals to the team. "We need to have clear expectations about taskings all the way through the command," he said. "It should be the same type of (tasking) process all across the command, at all the bases. The goal was to maximize the action officer's time to get the tasker done and to minimize the administrative time. I believe we did that." The colonel is pleased about what the team accomplished during the event. "We needed to develop a process that was repeatable, understandable and executable from top to bottom," he said. "I knew we could do better for our people." The Rapid Improvement Event concluded March 10 when the team briefed the process changes to Colonel Litchfield. Once General Carlson approves the changes, the new process will be deployed to all AFMC bases, wings and centers.