The Work Center 01E/AIRSpeed leading petty officer (LPO) at Fleet Readiness Center Mid-Atlantic (FRCMA) Oceana, Virginia, accepted an award March 14 in recognition of her work facilitating multiple efficiency efforts, saving naval aviation millions of dollars in the process.

Aviation Electronics Technician 2nd Class Virginia Anne Byarlay received the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE) Boots on the Ground (BoG) Site Visit Excellence Award, presented on behalf of the NAE by Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker, commander, Naval Air Forces.

"Your vision and personal efforts have been responsible for elevating FRCMA Oceana to the next level of enterprise behavior," Shoemaker wrote in his recognition letter. "The NAE will continue to benefit from your hard work and each of us is appreciative of what you have done in support of the team."

In her role as the AIRSpeed work center supervisor, Byarlay distinguished herself through contributions to the continuous process improvement (CPI) culture. She facilitated, coached, and mentored 102 personnel through AIRSpeed improvement projects, resulting in a cost avoidance of more than $2.5 million and identified nearly $70,000 of savings in maintenance hours. She also served as the subject matter expert for a CPI standardization event. Daily, she directs six petty officers in the command-wide implementation of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and Theory of Constraints (TOC). Byarlay led one and coached four TOC/Buffer Status Red (BSR) rollouts which impacted her command by reducing backlogs by 10 percent per quarter and reducing the time to reliably replenish (TRR) by 50 percent.

TOC is the theory all work centers have some type of constraint. Byarlay's team chose it as the process improvement methodology to assist with the rollout of the BSR report from the Buffer Management Tool program for all maintenance work centers at FRCMA. A BSR report offers a tool to predict when each work center may have a potential for an expeditious repair. By using the report at all morning maintenance meetings, FRCMA has dropped its TRR the supply officers' shelf. Since the beginning of the redesign, 39 work centers either are meeting or beating their current TRR and 18 of them are meeting their ultimate design TRR.

Additionally, Byarlay co-led the Huntron/Pinpoint Optimization effort which created a database which helps more quickly identify Learns or troubleshooting tools available for evaluating circuit cards' repair condition. Her work made the optimization option more readily available across all five FRCMA geographic locations; previously only part of the command used it. Byarlay's many efforts help predict needs and help supply officers better stock the shelves in support of flight line activities.

"AT2 Byarlay is the driving force behind everything AIRSpeed and is responsible for spreading the culture of AIRSpeed like wildfire throughout FRCMA Oceana," Lt. Jeremy Neiman, Byarlay's division officer, said. "Her passion to make everything and everyone better around her is what has always stood out to me."

Neiman and Chief Aviation Electronics Technician Mark Barbee, Byarlay's leading chief petty officer at the time, nominated her for the NAE award.

"She was hand selected back in May of 2016 to bring the program back to relevance, which she has done and exceeded our expectations," Neiman continued. "Not only has she done so through the events mentioned ... but through our organic training and certifications. With her steering the helm we now have 92 trained green belts, eight certified green belts and three certified black belts which ensures we are ready to take on any CPI initiative in the future."

Belts are part of the LSS process. Practitioners pursue training and certification as yellow, green and black belts, indicating an increasing level of proficiency.

Byarlay -- who officially received her LSS green belt, October 2016 -- leads the team which teaches all yellow belt classes. More than 170 Sailors have been certified at that level since May last year. The team also facilitates the green belt classes, training 37 Sailors since April 2016. Team members then motivate and coach those trained green belts to achieve certification. They hold monthly meetings, as well, to continue sharing information about process improvement, and starting in April they will be implementing Buffer Management Tool training monthly for CPI.

"I am very proud to receive this award," Byarlay said. "When my team and I took over we had a lot of obstacles to face, and we were all excited to take on the responsibility of CPI for the command. With a little training and insight from our CPI lead [Carla Trent], we were able to tackle all the different tasks and brought CPI back to what it was intended to do when the program started. I would never be able to do what I do without the help from my AIRSpeed team, and I'm excited to receive this award on all of our behalf."

Byarlay continues to work on her team coaching and toward her LSS black belt certification. The time and effort necessary to reach all these accomplishments are worth it to Byarlay because of the benefits process improvement offers to readiness.

"CPI is important in naval aviation due to the aging aircraft on the flight line," she said. "With the increase to repair costs and with manpower being diminished, the enterprise is trying to find ways to extend the life of the aircraft and its components for mission readiness utilizing CPI methods."

"An enterprise approach is important because we are all one team," Byarlay continued. "If one command has found a way to improve a system or a maintenance practice, we want to be able to recreate this at all naval aviation maintenance sites to improve the entire enterprise. We can all learn from one another, and if we can save money or time at one site, we should help replicate this process everywhere we can."

She also likes making a difference for the flight line and the Navy.

"The projects that we facilitated here at Oceana have greatly impacted our team by giving them the experience and knowledge needed to run our program and to help meet the CPI demand," Byarlay said. "My team has been directly involved with all events that have been completed and will continue coaching on all events that are conducted throughout the command."

The Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE) is a cooperative partnership of naval aviation stakeholders focused on sustaining required current readiness and advancing future warfighting capabilities at best possible cost. It is comprised of Sailors, Marines, civilians, and contractors from across service branches and organizations, working together to identify and resolve readiness barriers and warfighting degraders.

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