The improved process will save an estimated $15.3 million each year, for a total financial benefit of $99,805,881 between 20.
With the new process now standardized and centralized through one location, staff hours spent per MMRB case decreased from 5.5 hours to 3.5 hours, or by more than 74,800 hours annually. Another impressive operational improvement from this project included a decrease in Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO), which dropped from 516,129 to 75,758. The new MAR2 process also reduced error rates in process documentation, from 30% to less than 1%. This greatly surpassed the team’s goal of an average 45-day cycle time. The comparison of before-and-after Control Charts revealed a dramatic change in the MMRB process cycle time-a decrease from an average of 61 days to 29 days from start to finish. The team employed Minitab Control Charts to compare process stability before and after the new process was implemented, which helped the team confirm their solutions were meeting project goals. After a few more tweaks to their new process, which the team renamed MOS Administrative Retention Review, or MAR2, they collected additional pilot-test data. They brainstormed and identified possible solutions for process problems, then mapped out a new centralized process and performed pilot testing to ensure the new process reduced cycle time. Using Minitab for analysis helped Wentz and the team extract the knowledge they needed from their data in order to improve the MMRB process. For example, a Multi-Vari chart of cycle time showed that cycle times differed across MMRB processing locations, verifying the importance of standardizing the process. Minitab’s Multi-Vari Charts also aided the team by presenting ANOVA data graphically, revealing relationships between various factors and how they affected cycle time. They were able to pinpoint missing documentation as a key concern, and then made improvements to specifically address this process weakness. Wentz used Minitab to create a Pareto Chart of documentation errors for the MMRB process, which helped the team quickly identify and prioritize critical documentation errors. "Minitab graphs helped us to see where variation was occurring within the process," says Wentz. With Minitab, he and the project team could clearly tell that defects in MMRB documentation, as well as variations in process guidelines across different units within the Army, were contributing to the long cycle times.
Wentz used Minitab’s Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tools to both uncover new factors that were negatively affecting the process and to statistically verify that the factors the team had identified were indeed causing increases in cycle time. "The ability to easily manipulate thousands of lines of data in Minitab saved numerous hours." After the team defined process bottlenecks and collected baseline data, Wentz turned to Minitab for further analysis to investigate the factors that were impacting the process. The team developed process maps to fully understand the current state of the MMRB process and identified possible root causes for the long lead time. This method divides improvement projects into five phases: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. The Army Lean Six Sigma team used the DMAIC approach to frame their project.
They sought to decrease the average process cycle time from 61 to 45 days, while also standardizing and centralizing the process to remove variability. Wentz, along with team members from several Army groups, set out to reduce the wait these soldiers, their families, and their leaders face. "Some soldiers were waiting in excess of a year for this process to go through." "It’s scary for the soldier and their family," says Shane Wentz, an Army Master Black Belt working with the project team. The long lead time for this assessment kept soldiers’ careers in limbo, because they cannot deploy, make a permanent change of station, or go to school until a determination is made. The Army was taking an average of 61 days to reach decisions, and some outlier cases took as long as 400 days.
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