DoD and the military services are trying to implement a "new" program/institutional structure to reduce waste:
Defense Department managers say past Lean Six Sigma projects have revealed that between 57 percent and 90 percent of the time it takes to accomplish a given process is time wasted � that is, time not spent on something a customer is actually waiting on. It is time spent waiting for a problem to be solved, a technical glitch to be fixed, for a tool, parts or information to arrive, or duplicative work to be completed.
Kevin,
Sadly enough, from my previous experience as a Manufacturing engineer, these numbers are more or less par for the course. If anything, I think they may be optimistic. Most big manufacturing companies are about that bad. "Non-value-added time" usually takes up the majority of any process--unless the managers actually know what they're doing that is.
You'd be truly disappointed to realize how rare it is to actually have managers who know how to efficiently run a production system.
~Jon
...absolutely nothing new here, despite the author's assertions to the contrary.
Just another DOD management fad that will fall by the wayside.... like TQM and zero-defects.
The military is the classic 'bureaucracy' ... with a rigid centralized hierarchy that is fundamentally immune to the decentralized management system 'required' for this type of process improvement.
Such 'change' requires generals & admirals to effectively remove their 'stars' from their uniforms -- ain't gonna happen.