Transformation, value stream mapping lead to successes for ARPC's point credit division Published Feb. 8, 2008 By Sue Deardorff Chief, Point Credit and Accounting Division DENVER -- As the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard military personnel flights go through Personnel Services Delivery Transformation, the Air Reserve Personnel Center Point Credit and Accounting Division will continue to play a vital role supporting more than 970,000 Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard customers. Our experts will continue to use the data found on an array of service documents to compile service histories, establish anniversary dates and tally creditable military service for retirement purposes. It is a process that yields our customer's total retirement points, years of qualifying service, total active federal military service and total active federal commissioned service. Our role is evolving with PSD transformation, and we will face and overcome challenges as we transform data into information and information into knowledge to provide the best possible service to our customers. As military personnel flights draw down and control of personnel activities moves away from them, responsibility for acquiring and interpreting records will shift more to our Tier II subject matter experts. Part of this shift is well under way in the form of a service level agreement we entered into with the Air National Guard. This document identified the requirement for and service-level commitment necessary for the Airmen to be responsible for accessing vPC-GR to request changes or corrections to point credit records. As the need to have information available to Airmen increased, we found we needed to step up the level of service provided. To improve our processes, we embraced Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century Value Stream Mapping to walk through the steps we take to fulfill our responsibilities to our customers. VSM helped us identify value-added steps and focus our attention on streamlining and refining our processes. We were especially attentive to non value-added procedures like unnecessary steps and extended wait times - always with an eye toward eliminating waste wherever we found it. After mapping our processes, we were able to decrease the wait time for receiving prior service documents from MPFs by 45-percent and transformed information sharing relationships with our sister services. We forged an agreement with the Air Force Personnel Center Support Operations Division to get DD Forms 214 directly from the source. This arrangement managed to save more than 30 days of beating the bushes for documents critical to building service histories. For Individual Mobilization Augmentees, we worked closely with the Readiness Management Group to speed up validation of participation for nonpaid points. Our efforts made it possible for the contact center and the Airman to easily access accurate information. We identified our key processes, streamlined our operation and trimmed the fat. Are we the best we can be? Close, but we're not there yet. We must continue to evolve. As the indispensable human in the loop, we must continually strive to put our best foot forward, build on our successes and do our part to support PSD transformation.