News

Wing vision, mission statement first steps on path to increased productivity

  • Published
  • By Sandra Pishner
  • 446th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
MCCHORD FIELD, Wash. --  Looking at an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats can allow its members to Lead, Innovate, Adapt!

"Lead, Innovate, Adapt!" is the new vision statement senior leaders developed for the wing during a Strategic Alignment and Deployment event in January.

"Continuous Process Improvement is very important to me and I'm very pleased we had such a productive Strategic Alignment and Deployment event.  The wing's vision to lead, innovate, and adapt will remain relevant for years to come," said Col. Scott McLaughlin, 446th Airlift Wing commander.

Once the vision was in focus, the group of 10 people turned their attention toward developing a mission statement.

"The vision was easier to come up with," said Maj. Rebecca Schultz, 446th Airlift Wing Performance Management.  "We all agreed quickly; it was an easy conversation.  The mission statement, however, was a challenge."

The mission statement: Train, equip and support our Airmen to deliver operational capability to fulfill America's global mobility commitments.

Senior leaders poured their brainpower into developing the mission statement, going through the wing's former mission statement to be and making it more relevant.

"It's a challenge when you have different functional areas you want to incorporate into one mission statement," Schultz said. "It's much easier when you have one mission in a squadron.  But in a wing, you want to make sure you incorporate everybody into it, not just the fliers or mission support or maintenance."

Creating a vision and mission statement, however, is only the beginning of implementing process improvement strategies throughout the wing under the Air Force Smart Operations model.

AFSO, which draws its inspiration from Lean Six Sigma, focuses on generating efficiencies and improving combat capabilities across the Air Force. AFSO applies to all of the processes associated with the Air Force mission. Governed by proven process improvement techniques, the goal of AFSO is to significantly increase the Air Force's combat capabilities

A series of events designed to propel the wing toward efficiencies across the board began back in November 2014 when Col. Matthew Burger, 349th Air Mobility Wing, Travis Air Force Base, Calif., came to McChord Field.  Burger presented AFRC's "Focused Leadership" initiative.

Following Burger's presentation, a senior leader course was conducted, with more than 30 people attending.  Hosted by AFRC and Matt Arens, the AFRC contractor for AFSO participants were taught why AFSO is important, the history of it and the goals of doing it in an organization.

"We looked at our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We talked about our priorities of effort. We even incorporated the new inspection system where we talked about the four major graded areas and what priority of effort we have in line with each: leading people, managing resources, executing the mission and improving the unit," said Schultz.

"We're doing this so we have true priorities in the wing and we're focused, instead of doing things just as they come up.  We don't want to put out the fires as they happen.  We want to make sure we're ahead of those fires," said Schultz.

The next step in developing a culture of continuous process improvement is Enterprise Value Stream Analysis, which is like an SA&D, but at a lower level.

During the EVSA, each squadron will identify key processes and prioritize processes that need improvement.

"I'm looking forward to the next milestone event in our Continuous Process Improvement journey-- the unit level Enterprise Value Stream Analyses," said McLaughlin. "These sessions will allow units the opportunity to take a close look at their internal processes and formulate ways to improve them.  The EVSA is crucial to the success of any CPI initiative and I'm looking forward to hearing about the EVSA results from all of our units."

Schultz says the wing commander's expectation is for everyone in the wing to have a solid understanding of what continuous process improvement is and what it can do to help. 

"This is a way to be more efficient instead of trying to 'do more with less', " said Schultz.

"So, this is not just another idea the Air Force came up with," said Schultz.  "During the senior leadership course, we took a tour of a non-government company that implements these models for process improvement."

The large group of 446th AW leaders toured the Cascade Gasket & Manufacturing Company Inc., in Kent, Washington.

"I picked a company that was organized around lean to make it easier to visualize the concepts," said Schultz. "It was nice to take the leadership there and have them see that the production guy was involved directly with lean and process improvement, and how we can incorporate similar practices here."

Chief Master Sgt. Dan Morris, 446th Maintenance Group was part of the group that toured the Cascade Gasket & Manufacturing Company. 

"The tour was very informative." Morris said. "The company embraced the lean process for everything they did.  The manufacturing area was very clean, which was due to the use of visual aids and markings and it was evident when something was out of place. On one of the desks there were outlines of where things are placed to include the tape roll, stapler, phone and even the person's coffee cup. All of the workers embraced the lean processes and were part of the design of the manufacturing area.  As soon as you walked in you can tell it was a very efficient and a professional company. "

Schultz says Reservists can expect to see and hear more about AFSO and invites them to participate.

''We are in the infancy stages of developing who we are as an organization in this process," she said.  "We're always going to look to improve on what we do as a business and everybody is involved in that, from the one striper all the way to the top. Anybody who sees a process that can be improved, I encourage them to talk to me or tell their leadership."

Schultz's office is located in Bldg. 1214, Room 111.  She can be contacted by calling 982-2840.  She also has a Sharepoint page that houses AFSO tools and information: https://eim.amc.af.mil/org/446ccx/default.aspx