By Betsy Haley
NAVRIIP Communications Action Team

In an effort to accelerate the migration to cost-wise readiness and to leverage best business practices into more Navy and Marine Corps operations, the Naval Aviation Readiness Integrated Improvement program (NAVRIIP) will introduce NAVRIIP University (NavU) to facilitate the education process to the Navy.

Beginning on March 16 at the NAVAIR Support Equipment Facility, Solomons, Md., the NavU one-day quarterly training session will focus on the processes, tools and applications available in the NAVRIIP and AIRSpeed toolkits. By providing exposure to NAVRIIP history, processes and tools, any employee assigned to units participating in NAVRIIP and AIRSpeed activities will learn how to quickly become an effective member of the team within the initiative.

Members of NAVRIIP management team, and the Thomas Group, a consulting company with expertise in process management, will teach the course. NavU training will occur on the third Tuesday of the last month of each quarter. Other 2004 dates are:

June 15th – San Diego, Calif.
September 14th – Norfolk, Va.

For registration and course information, contact the Thomas Group by email at [email protected], or by calling 972.401.4276. Additional sessions will be added if demand exceeds the current schedule.

NAVRIIP is a comprehensive program designed to make fundamental process changes to the way the Navy provides cost-wise manpower, equipment, maintenance, supply and training to stateside Naval Aviation commands between deployments. AIRSpeed is NAVRIIP’s enabler for operationalizing cost-wise readiness across the Naval Aviation Enterprise.

The training will consist of four modules, each lasting two hours. The first introduction module will concentrate on NAVRIIP and AIRSpeed history, the charter and organization, and an overview of the processes, tools, teams and success stories. The second module will cover key processes used in the NAVRIIP program, including metrics management, barrier identification and removal, as well as actions in progress management. The third module will focus on NAVRIIP tools and attendees will have a choice on which two tools overviews to attend – theory of constraints, lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, the aviation financial analysis tool, earned value analysis or the Kelly Index. The fourth module will address effective team membership for the cross-functional team and barrier removal teams, type-model-series teams. An overview of product enterprise teams will be added later.

For more information on NAVRIIP and AIRSpeed, go to http://www.airpac.navy.mil/navriip/.