In this month's Quality news, find out who has recently earned a Green Belt and a Yellow Belt, and learn about a couple NEXT project updates.
Green Belt Certification
Breann Cooper (Water Quality System Control & Planning) – Chlorine Residual Sampling and Analysis Optimization
Breann’s project created a standard chlorine residual sampling analytical method across all four of Citizens’ surface water treatment plants. The primary method now relies on online analyzers and eliminated the manual sampling every two hours. Time savings is a great benefit in this project, as well as increased consistency and $15,000 in initial savings for reagents.
Yellow Belt Certification
Celeste Williams (Human Resources) – Conflict of Interest Annual Campaign Process
Celeste's project developed a written work instruction for managing the Conflict of Interest (COI) Annual Campaign. This saved five hours of time spent managing the process and increased the completion rate from 95 to 99 percent.
Quality’s First Virtual Yellow Belt Training
On February 11, the following employees completed the two-day Virtual CLASS Yellow Belt Training:
- Jada Buchanan (User Experience)
- Jennifer Gill (Environmental)
- Tamiko Kendrick (Human Resources)
- Gillian Marks (Environmental)
- Payton Staman (UE&C)
- Jodi Whitney (Human Resources & Health, Safety & Security)
- Jason Young (Wastewater Operations)
CLASS Reminders and Training Updates
CLASS Refresher Training 2021 is now in Citizens Success Academy. General Awareness Training is coming soon to CSA.
NEXT Projects Deliver Big Results
Last issue, we introduced you to the iNnovation EXcellence Team (NEXT) and invited you to submit improvement ideas to the Improvement Ideas List on Quality’s iTrust page. Now we are excited to share updates with you on some of the team’s early achievements.
Rich Lefler, Innovation Champion, reports that a prototype for a new cutting tool is being developed by Gas Instrument/Control Technician Darryl Edwards with the support of a team of employees (Jeremy LaFara, Steve Griffin, John Eddington, and Ben Warren). As part of past construction practice, gas services were renewed by inserting plastic pipe through the old steel service main. This practice lowers the cost of excavation but is challenging if the service requires re-routing or repair. If successful, the new tool will allow a section of the casing to be removed from a service pipe without damaging the gas service line to allow for rerouting or repair. Rich is supporting the project team and documenting the process so that NEXT can apply the lessons learned to future improvement projects.
Jeremy Kosegi, Innovation Champion, saw an opportunity to strengthen Citizens’ new product review process. Jeremy, along with team members Rebecca Schaefer, Tim Shutters, and Tracey Black, conducted a technical and economic evaluation of a manhole rehabilitation product. The team coordinated with NEXT and Supply Chain to develop a more consistent product evaluation that will soon be available for employees to use. Jeremy stated of his work on the team, “CLASS has taught us the value of reducing waste by documenting not only our processes, but also our evaluation results. We hope that the new product evaluation process will serve as a valuable tool for incorporating innovative products into our work activities.”
We know many other of our employees have great ideas like this one, so be sure to share them with the NEXT team on iTrust. Also, if you’ve been contacted by a vendor and wonder if their product is worthwhile, add the idea to the Improvement Ideas List on iTrust and let NEXT help you. Together we can take Citizens to the “next” level!
