OFFICE OF THE U.S. ARMY SURGEON GENERAL (Sept. 27, 2016) -- U.S. Army Medical Command has claimed top honors once again in the annual Lean Six Sigma Excellence Awards Program.
During an awards ceremony held Sept. 14 in the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes, Senior Executive Service Robert Goodman, MEDCOM Chief of Staff, and Donna Whittaker, Ph.D., MEDCOM Lean Six Sigma deployment director, accepted the 2015 Lean Six Sigma AR 10-87 Organizational Deployment Award.
Whittaker, an LSS Master Black Belt and retired Army colonel, said this is the second year in a row that MEDCOM has won the LEAP award in the direct unit reporting category.
"The success of this award can be summed up in that we have people all over MEDCOM making improvements every day, and this award actually reflects that work. This is not a MEDCOM Headquarters award, it's the work of all the LSS green belts, black belts, master black belts and LSS leaders who are actually on the ground doing process improvement work," said Whittaker, who graciously accepted the LEAP award from the Honorable Patrick J. Murphy, Under Secretary of the Army.
Immediately following, Whittaker and the MEDCOM team were also congratulated by Robin P. Swan, Deputy Director, Office of Business Transformation, Office of the Secretary of the Army.
Hosted by the Under Secretary of the U.S. Army, the annual LEAP ceremony recognizes Army organizations and practitioners who build, sustain, and employ continuous process improvements strategies and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) capabilities. It also provides an ideal opportunity for all major subordinate commands to share continuous process improvements and Lean Six Sigma best practices and lessons learned across the Army.
"The Army basically wants to know 'Are you improving processes, and are those processes saving the government money?'" said Whittaker, who shares success of the MEDCOM LSS Program with co-director Angela A. Koelsch, also a Master Black Belt and retired Army colonel. MEDCOM launched Lean Six Sigma, a process improvement methodology, in 2006 when the Army first adopted LSS practices. To date, the MEDCOM LSS Program has yielded $1 billion in financial benefits (cost savings, cost avoidance, and revenue generation).
To earn the 2015 LEAP, MEDCOM's LSS program was evaluated and required to excel in five areas: Financial Benefits, Operational Benefits, Project Identification, Replication, and Measurement.
"This is the second year in a row Headquarters Department of the Army has awarded this to MEDCOM, and the third time since its inception in 2008. The Army's selection board was made up of Lean Six Sigma subject matter experts from across the breadth of the Army, so it is meaningful and pivotal they selected MEDCOM as the best of the best yet again." said Gaston Randolph, Jr., director, Strategy Management, Office of the U.S. Army Surgeon General/U.S. Army Medical Command, whose directorate provides oversight to the MEDCOM LSS Program.
"This is a tribute not only to those LSS experts on the Headquarters OneStaff overseeing this program and developing our award nomination, but most importantly to those strategy and innovation teams at each major subordinate command, Regional Health Command Headquarters, dedicated LSS belt practitioners, and leaders across the entire MEDCOM whose hard work and resulting successful project work provided the underpinnings of the winning nomination," Randolph said.
As evident by its repeat performance as a LEAP winner, MEDCOM has shown it remains committed to its mission to provide sustained health services and research in support of the Army's Total Force to enable readiness and conserve the fighting strength while caring for its Soldiers for Life and Families.
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