Several employees have recently completed projects and earned Yellow Belt, Advanced Yellow Belt, and Green Belt certifications. Check out our collective continuous improvement progress for Fiscal Year 2021.
CLASS Certifications
Yellow Belts
Don Bryant (Health, Safety & Security) – Chemical Line Clearing Standard: Don’s project developed a Trust-wide procedure for opening chemical piping that will ensure the safety of employees who may be exposed to harmful chemicals when the piping is opened. This procedure establishes a standard for employees to be aware of and prepared for what is required when performing line clearing. It also reduces the risk of employees potentially being exposed to harmful chemicals during the process.
Carla Baber (IT) – Active Directory Data Clean Up: Carla’s project identified an issue with the nightly data sync between the Data Warehouse (Oracle EBS) and the Active Directory (directory service that allows administrators to manage permissions and access to network resources), which caused missing and/or inaccurate employee information such as business phone numbers, titles, locations, and departments in the Global Address List in Microsoft Exchange. Resolving the data sync issue improved the data availability for other applications and for employees using the Global Address List.
John Scott (Gas Transmission & Distribution) – Optimizing Gas Damage Billing Process: John's project determined the actual cost of repairing natural gas damage and collecting payment for these charges. The previous process failed to fully recover the actual cost of repairs when a non-Citizens excavator caused damage, and it only charged for labor and materials. The new process adjusts the cost calculations to include additional costs for mobilization, equipment, loadings, and administrative. It also establishes accountability to ensure bills are appropriately sent out and paid or followed up on with necessary legal action if unpaid.
Todd Fuller (Thermal) – Gas Hedging for Perry K: Todd’s project established an alternative hedging method to obtain market-competitive pricing for natural gas for the Thermal utility. By changing strategies, Thermal customers would see a reduction on hedging transaction costs and limit counterparty exposures. Based on the four most recent hedges from November 2019 to January 2020, Citizens could save $349,708 per year with the new hedging process.
Advanced Yellow Belts
Maria Garavaglia (Energy Distribution Engineering) – Demolition Request Internal Process: Maria's project created a new application to store all of the incoming demolition requests, aerials, and any other documents sent in by the customer. The app pulls in necessary information from multiple databases to create the demo request, which is then sent out to the field.
Justin Burnett (UE&C) – Water Meter Information Website Improvements: Justin’s project updated content on Citizens’ external website to provide customers with resources to understand the “ins and outs” of their water meter connection and service line. This new content provides a practical approach, including pictures, an educational video, and FAQs to help customers understand their responsibilities. The information can be found by visiting citizensenergygroup.com/My-Home and then clicking on “My Responsibilities” and then “Water Meter Pit and Lid Basics.”
Green Belt
Kevin Hackett (Wastewater Collections) – Wastewater Service Request Information: Kevin's project improved the accuracy of the data collected for wastewater service requests during reported sewer emergencies. A new photo process was implemented, which provides clarification/validation on the location as well as additional visual details on the nature of the sewer emergency.
Recent CLASS Yellow Belt Training
Congratulations to the eight employees who completed the two-day CLASS Virtual Yellow Belt Training on April 29! Participants included Paul Stultz (Westfield), Shannon Saylors (IT), Catherine Parsons (Environmental), Jennifer Stansberry (Governance and Board Affairs), Jim Bennett (Gas Transmission & Distribution), Carol Traylor (Billing and Customer Service), Crit Crabtree (Fleet and Facilities), and David Foster (Environmental).
CLASS Training
- CLASS General Awareness and CLASS Refresher Training are available on Citizens Success Academy.
- Quality facilitates CI Tools sessions based on demand. If an area would like to schedule a specific CI Tools session with Quality, please email CLASS@citizensenergygroup.com. Available topics include Gemba Walk, A3, SIPOC & Process Mapping, Root Cause Analysis, and After-Action Review.
- For more information, visit the Quality iTrust site and click on the CLASS Training button.
Trust-Wide Continuous Improvement Progress
As of the end of quarter two of fiscal year 2021, several departments have earned stars for Continuous Improvement activity. Keep up the good work!
1 Star: Thermal, Billing and Customer Service, Shared Field Services, Legal, Supply Chain, Corporate Affairs, Human Resources
2 Stars: Water Production/Quality, Westfield, Information Technology, Health, Safety and Security
3 Stars: Wastewater Plant Operations, Wastewater Collections, Energy Distribution Engineering, Plant Engineering, Underground Engineering and Construction, Treasury
4 Stars: Environmental Stewardship
5 Stars: Program and Technical Services
We're making good progress toward achieving our target goals for continuous improvement participation and improvement projects completed. For details, see below.
Have a process that needs documenting?
Templates are available on the Quality iTrust CI Tools & Templates page. You can contact a member of the Quality Department for assistance in creating one of the documents listed below:
- Work Instruction
- Process Map
- Knowledge Transfer Plan
