DIVING IN TO HELP For Boeing employees, volunteering their skills can make a big difference By Tim Granholm and photos by Marian Lockhart As a manager of Boeing’s 747 Lean+ Promotion Office in Everett, Wash., Blake Skouras leads a team focused on reducing manufacturing time and overall costs for one of aviation’s most iconic airplanes. So when Skouras heard about an opportunity to volunteer his professional skills to benefit the Seattle Aquarium, he dived right in. Since July, Skouras and fellow Boeing Lean+ teammate Toni Miller have been part of a team working to help transform the Seattle Aquarium’s school and group registration process. Using the Lean+ problem-solving model, Skouras set out to help the aquarium reduce the amount of time it takes for groups to register for a visit, lessen the administrative burden on staff and improve the overall customer experience. “There are many forms of giving back to the community,” Skouras said, “but the way I like to give back is by transforming something and making it better than it was before.” 50 BOEING FRONTIERS / DECEMBER 2013–JANUARY 2014 Skouras’ work is one example of Boeing employees giving back to the community through skills-based volunteering, said Lianne Stein, vice president of Global Corporate Citizenship. “There is a tremendous amount of skill in this company, and when com-bined with our charitable contributions, the impact we can have in the community is driven even higher,” Stein said, adding that through volunteer work employees receive valuable experience, collaborate with others and gain a strong sense of satisfaction. The Seattle Aquarium group, apply-ing a Lean+ tool known as Value Stream Mapping, used dozens of sticky notes— and lots of patience—to map out the registration process from start to finish. The exercise allowed the team to see all the actions required to successfully register a group visit. They identified 36 improvement opportunities that, if implemented, have the potential to reduce the time it takes for visitors to register and for aquarium staff to process the request. As a result of the mapping exercise, aquarium officials realized they could speed up the confirmation process by switching from a phone call confirmation to an automatic email confirmation, according to Catie Fyfe, who manages school and family programs at the Seattle Aquarium. “We’ve put in place a number of the to-do’s and are already seeing a reduction in time,” Fyfe said. “We anticipate seeing time savings of anywhere between 25 and 80 percent. This means we are able to bring more students and families in the door, allowing us to meet our mission of educating more people about the importance of our oceans. Because we have a better understanding of how registration flow works, we can mirror what works best and apply that across our different programs.” Whether Boeing employees have technical know-how, organizational expertise or just a personal talent, when it comes to skills-based volunteering, everyone has something to offer, Stein said. Since September, for example, Dan Rubin, Boeing Electronic & Sensor Solutions IT Business Partner, has spent one afternoon a week volunteering his technical skills and experience to help a nonprofit organization in Fairfax, Va., improve its Information Technology infrastructure. From eliminating dormant email accounts, which bog down computer systems, to setting up mobile modems that allow employees to connect remotely, Rubin has helped the non-profit, known as FACETS, maximize its limited IT assets. “We really didn’t know how much
Frontiers December 2013—January 2014 Issue
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