DB 10

101

The only company I have worked for is the United States Army so with the limited experience in anything other than military, I chose the Army as my company. The Army has vast amount of areas that need improving and choosing areas that deal with management improvements were relatively easy. Through the years, the Army has expanded and decreased its ranks based on the possible threat around the world. Because of these extreme expansions and contractions, the Army’s evaluation of personnel and getting the right leader to the right position has not always been done with the best-qualified individuals. The Army continues to strive to improve processes and procedures, but is lacking on the way they prepare leaders for selected jobs. I would like to develop a process improvement plan for the Army because the need to recognize top performers and get them to the right jobs with the right training. The Army builds, produces, and develops leaders at every level to take on a myriad of responsibilities but it is the jobs they are assigned that often are not suited for their talents.

Additionally, career development is another area that lacks the necessary focus to prepare future leaders and supervisors with the tools needed to be successful. The Army has career paths developed for a broad general guideline for secession. Many times these path are not the ones that will get you promoted or prepare you for the next position or level.

The use of knowledge management databases are often overlooked or not used. The introduction of computers into our daily lives has helped and hurt the process of getting information out to a massive audience. We have databases filled with knowledge and data and is rarely accessed. Because of rapid changes within each field and the data is so great, it would take considerable amount of time to access and locate the needed materiel. Changing the way we use data and information may be the key that unlocks improvements in personnel actions and career development.

102

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The organization that I have chosen for my process improvement plan is an organization within the Army Reserves. I work for the Army Reserves as a Department of Defense civilian employee. I support approximately 270 personnel with their administrative needs. There is also an Army Reserve Personnel Action Center (ARPAC) that is located in my building that supports my organization along with four others. The purpose of the ARPAC is to support/improve the readiness of the units and personnel that are assigned to the units they support

The ARPAC needs an improvement plan to their hiring process. They are not as effective as they could be because they don’t have all of the employees they are authorized. The ARPAC is authorized seven employees but only have two. I think most of us know and can relate to the importance of having a full staff within an organization. The workload is distributed evenly when you have a full staff.

Some of the issues with not having a full staff of employees within any organization are the employees being overworked which can lead to more stress and the work is not completed. With the organization in my building, the work is getting done but at an extremely slow rate. For example, actions are sent through e-mail correspondence and they reply when the action is completed; the turnaround from the action requested to being completed is approximately two to three weeks.

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Why do you plan to develop What company are you planning to use for your process improvement plan?

NuStar Energy is a petroleum company with two business aspects, pipeline management and terminals operation. I’m a terminal operator where we receive, store, blend and issue petroleum products. The terminal where I work has asphalt, gas, diesel and #6 oil. We receive the products by tankers, rail cars and trucks and issue the end products to customers with allocations for specified products such as truck drivers getting gas and diesel for delivery to gas stations.

a process improvement plan for this company?

My collateral position is Process Safety Management Coordinator, PSM for short, and I conduct monthly meetings with management or operators to identify and address the different ways we do business to see where we can make improvements. For instance, we’ve identified safety issues to address such as adding walkways across piping to gain safe access to equipment. We’ve also done things like streamlining a specific operation to eliminate redundant or unnecessary steps. We’ve made great strides in the last 5 years and we have a lot more improvement to make.

What are some examples of known deficient processes?

One area that needs improvement is training. There are multiple operations that we conduct daily which require industry knowledge as well as sight specific knowledge in order to be a well rounded operator. This is important because we operate with 3 or 4 people per shift doing multiple jobs at once so if you lack knowledge in a specific operation you are limited in your job scope. The main problems that exist right now are no formal training program, no way to track what knowledge an operator has and a lack of encouragement for those less motivated to learn. Currently knowledge is passed down from senior operators to the junior operators and not everyone get the same training. “GOGs and SOPs remove the ambiguity from tasks, or work performance steps, and allow staff to be trained to a standardized level across functional areas.” (Bryant, R.J., 2013). We have SOP’s and they’re beneficial but not all variables of operation are captured in them A detailed training program could correct these problems.