The U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility and Japan Regional Maintenance Center (SRF/JRMC), Yokosuka detachment has thousands of gallons of oil routinely drained from ships coming into dry dock.  Special teams have to be on standby and ready at any given time to remedy a spill.  Shop X-99 consists of 65 members, 28 of which are oil specialists.  Shop X-99 also holds the seven member ‘Mada Yatte Tanda (MYT) team.  This team, in keeping with SRF/JRMC’s organizational goals, decided to improve technology, specifically their burdensome, unwieldy equipment used for oil clean up.

After identify stakeholders, the team used a tree diagram to describe methods and tools used in the clean up process.  After answering questions, they determined the root causes of their difficulty of clean up was mostly the machinery they used.  The team used hand-operated skimmers to chase the oil, they had to use dozens of hoses.  Set up and transportation was time-consuming and required many workers.  The team decided to completely reverse the system of clean up and since there was no funding, they had to create their own equipment with what they had on hand. 

The new process and equipment exceeded the goals of the MYT team and provided many intangible benefits.

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