Two LEAN Six Sigma Green Belt-certified instructors assigned to the aviation intermediate maintenance department aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) facilitated a Green Belt class in the avionics production work center 10 July.

A LEAN Six Sigma Green Belt has achieved a level of understanding principles of leadership and resource and personnel management.

“It’s about process improvement,” said Aviation Support Equipment Technician 1st Class Alan Gudknecht, the Green Belt instructor who led the class. “It involves multiple principles including LEAN Six Sigma and Theories of Constraint.”

LEAN Six Sigma is a method of leadership that relies on a collaborative team effort to remove waste and reduce variation to improve performance and productivity.

“Green Belt is a level of certification,” said Aviation Electronics Technician 1st Class Bryan Maddy, another Green Belt-certified instructor in AIMD. “Once you become certified, you can run these events and see what we can do to improve work processes and get more out of our work.”

Maddy also said every Sailor they teach will have the ability to think outside the box to see if there’s room for efficiency improvements in their work centers.

“It’s important and benefits the ship because it involves saving time, resources and money,” said Gudknecht.

Truman is currently underway conducting composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) with the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG).

COMPTUEX is an intensive, month-long exercise designed to fully integrate units of HSTCSG, while testing the strike group's ability as a whole to carry out sustained combat operations from the sea. Ships, squadrons and staffs will be tested across every core warfare area within their mission sets through a variety of simulated and live events, including air warfare, strait transits, and responses to surface and subsurface contacts and electronic attacks.

HSTCSG is scheduled to deploy later this year. Strike group elements participating in COMPTUEX include Truman and embarked Carrier Air Wing One; staffs from Carrier Strike Group 8 and Destroyer Squadron 28, the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60); and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Ramage (DDG 61), USS Lassen (DDG 82), USS Forrest Sherman (DDG 98) and USS Farragut (DDG 99).

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