New green belt course encourages innovation in USAFE

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Ryan Crane
  • U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany --  U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa launched the first iteration of an updated green belt training to the command last week.

This green belt won’t certify your skills as a karate master, but it will give you the tools needed to improve processes and and reduce waste in your work center.

“Green belt is a certification program to teach people the eight step practical problem solving method to improve processes and solve problems,” said Master Sgt. Kelly McKenzie, 48th Fighter Wing, who traveled to Ramstein Air Base, Germany, to teach the new course.

Fifteen students from around the Kaiserslautern Military Community spent five days working their way through this redesigned course.

“This is a new green belt course, McKenzie explained. “We call it green belt 2.0. It’s only taught in USAFE right now. We are trying to make our processes better so we can train more people and be more efficient in that training.”

The names and programs for process improvement may change over the years, but the culture is built into Airmen. Gen. Tod Wolters, USAFE-AFAFRICA commander, emphasizes that innovation is what makes the U.S. Air Force great.

“The next generation will be quicker, faster, smarter and tougher than the current generation,” Wolters said. “It has everything to do with improving the joint fight; it has everything to do with improving command and control; and at the end of the day, it has everything to do with making the next generation even better than today’s”

No only have the Airmen changed, but the resource environment they operate in is significantly different, even from five years ago.

“[Process improvement] is 100 percent more important now because our budget is smaller, and we have fewer people than we have before,” McKenzie said. “We can’t keep doing things the way we have always done them. We have to look at our processes and take the waste out of them.”

The Airmen attending the course hope to take the skills learned and apply them to process in their workcenters.

“This course makes you open your eyes to what kinds of problems there are,” said Senior Master Sgt. Dwayne Hill, USAFE-AFAFRICA avionics functional manager.” People keep walking by, people keep ignoring problems and saying it’s always been done this way. When we are in this fiscally contained environment you want to eliminate any waste in processes or procedures. We need to work more efficiently to reduce cost and save manhours.”

Continuous process improvement is becoming more and more pervasive in the Air Force culture, but it is everyone’s responsibility to encourage a culture of innovation.

“We teach [green belt trainees] to not stifle creativity,” McKenzie said. “We have new people coming in, who may have seen something different or have new eyes on the process. Empower those Airmen to bring those ideas forward.”

Green belt 2.0 training is just another step in the Air Force’s roadmap to improving their culture of innovation.