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Eight-Step CPI modernizes Pass, ID office

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Rachel Loftis
  • 99th Air Base Wing Public Affairs

The Nellis Air Force Base Pass and ID office recently went through a six-month continuous process improvement.

CPI is an ongoing effort to improve quality, products, services or processes and solve problems on and around the base.

For the Pass and ID office, customers were unable to receive an access badge for the base following approval notification. On a quarterly basis, approximately 52 percent of customers requiring access were unable to receive a badge. This meant they couldn't access the installation to conduct official work.

“We realized we had a problem with allowing the contractors on base.” said Tech Sgt. Christopher Spicher, 99th Security Forces Squadron, NCO in-charge, “We run background checks in the Pass and ID office so there was a lot of duplication as we were using a paper based product. We were behind.

“Mr. McCully came in and began improving our process to 99 percent,” he continued. “This equates to 106,000 man hours that were saved and about six million dollars.”

The problems were identified prior to the airshow coordination in 2014. Vendors were unable to access the installation after they had already been vetted and approved.

“We used the Air Force eight-step practical problem solving model where we gathered the data over a 30-day period to determine the magnitude of the problem,” said Sean McCully, Installation CPI manager. “We then determined the potential root causes of the problem and then developed solutions based on those. All the subject matter expert’s some of the customers mapped the current process and we found inefficiencies and non-value added processes that created confusion in the Pass and ID office.”

Several solutions were implemented.

The Pass and ID office reduced duplicate paperwork processing and created a spreadsheet for all processed badge requests instead of multiple. They also established a work standard and ensured all personnel were trained to it.

Now, when customers show up to the front gate to request an access badge, the customer will be provided one immediately and will not be turned away as had happened prior to problem resolution.

“Hopefully units understand that problems exist within their organizations and there is a methodology to solve them.” said McCully. “It's better to expose the problem and work to solve it rather than have people spending time what we call ‘non-value added work’ working in a broken process that provides no value to their customers.”