PHILADELPHIA –
Since its inception nearly three years ago, Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support Clothing and Textiles’ culture improvement team has worked to enhance communication throughout the supply chain.
Streamlining communication between management, supervisors and team members was consistently identified as an area for improvement in previous culture climate survey results.
One of the CIT’s most significant undertakings was completing its first War Games simulation of an emergency scenario in November 2017, CIT leader and material planner Mark Stone said.
“For our first one, [the War Games exercise] was a success and showed how we all work together under a stressful and short timeframe,” Stone said.
During the exercise every C&T employee was tasked with responding to a hurricane that resulted in the destruction of stock at a third-party logistics provider. Employees completed tasks, including confirming which items were stored at the affected site and rerouting stock on its way to the 3PL within five hours.
The CIT developed the scenario with senior management and used an integrated team meeting process to virtually track processes, list milestones and keep employees accountable for their tasks within the scope of the exercise, C&T Deputy Director Roy Dillard said.
Because of the timeliness of the exercise, employees were also encouraged to speak face-to-face versus sending emails, CIT member and product specialist Tanya Lawrence said.
“Every day culture has taught us to interact through technology as opposed to the ‘old fashioned’ way of face-to-face,” Lawrence said.
C&T plans to conduct war games exercises quarterly and will follow a “crawl, walk, run” military-style increasing level of difficulty throughout the year, Dillard said.
“In the future, we will be able to build creative scenarios to further enhance C&T’s organizational culture,” Dillard said. “Running war game exercises will allow the workforce to physically participate, promote more communication and engage talents, new and seasoned, to strengthen and improve the culture dynamics.”
The 2018 DLA culture climate survey is open until April 17. Employees are encouraged to provide their feedback about working at DLA by completing the survey.