MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT, San Diego -- The Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego’s Business Process Office received the Outstanding Continuous Process Improvement Implementation Achievement Award and the Continuous Process Improvement Excellence Award here, Jan. 10.
The awards were for runner-up for the best organization-wide CPI deployment in the supporting establishment and for being the top CPI implementation leader. The CPI is the leadership philosophy of continuously improving processes in support of the mission of the organization. The CPI uses the methodology of the integrated application of tools and techniques to improve performance of processes necessary to accomplish the mission.
The awards were presented to Judy Fernandez, BPO director and CPI implementation director, by Maj. Gen. Ronald L. Bailey, commanding general, MCRD San Diego and the Western Recruiting Region.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do this without the (command) leadership we have,” said Fernandez. In 2008, the depot established an Executive CPI Council. It is led by Maj. Gen. Bailey, who is the CPI deployment champion for MCRD San Diego. Fernandez developed the strategy for deploying CPI here, and provides advice and guidance to the CPI deployment champion and the Executive CPI Council.
The BPO manages, coordinates and facilitates the activities related to the Department of Defense, Marine Corps mandated strategic sourcing, continuous process improvement, and business process improvement initiatives. They also manage the depot’s internal quality improvement efforts using industry and government standard methodologies, according to the organization function manual.
The CPI project that won the runner-up award reduced the number of steps to discharge recruits not completing boot camp and reduced the time from an average of 13 to six days. This project also reduced recruit holding costs by $800,000 in 2009 and $620,000 in 2010.
The BPO went to more than 80 work sections on the depot to identify all performance requirements and compile information to create a gap analysis. This analysis determines where each section is and is not meeting their requirements, and what they can do to fix the problem.
The BPO then started to initiate projects across the command to rectify problems. The projects were then prioritized based on which ones would help mission accomplishment the most.
Depot all-hands meetings were also held to determine what is mission essential and determine how to come up with savings.
“Each section can evaluate their needs and proactively be prepared,” said Fernandez.