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General Dynamics Information Technology, a business unit of General Dynamics, received a 3-year, $9.2 million task order to improve business processes at the U.S. Army Medical Command (MEDCOM) and Office of the Surgeon General. The task order (GS-23F-8094H – W81XWH-09-F-0198) was awarded under the General Services Administration’s Mission Oriented Business Integrated Services (MOBIS) contract vehicle.

General Dynamics IT will support the Army MEDCOM Lean Six Sigma program by providing instruction and consulting services to internal organizations for MEDCOM’s Director of Strategy and Innovation. The company will perform training, coaching and mentoring to organizational leaders and designated personnel.

DID has more on Lean and 6 Sigma and their origins in private industry…

Lean 6 Sigma combines the principles of Lean (reducing and eliminating non-value activities) with 6 Sigma (reducing variation, increasing quality) to improve process efficiency and effectiveness.

Lean manufacturing, developed by Toyota, is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, value is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for. Lean is concerned with creating more value with less work.

6 Sigma, initially developed by Motorola, seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and variation in manufacturing and business processes. Six Sigma uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and trains people within an organization who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets.