San Joaquin’s Lee-Haynes selected as Employee of the Quarter
 
  By  Annette Silva, DLA Distribution San Joaquin Public Affairs
  Natalie Lee-Haynes, Receiving Branch chief at DLA Distribution San Joaquin, California, was selected as the DLA Employee of the Quarter in category C for the first quarter, fiscal year 2019. Her outstanding leadership qualities coupled with her professionalism and dedication to the mission and the warfighter warranted her selection.
 
Shad Winter, Mission Group chief, praises Lee-Haynes’ leadership abilities. “She is an exceptional Receiving Branch chief,” commented Winter. “She epitomizes and embraces servant leadership.” Under her leadership, Lee-Haynes implemented the DLA Distribution Supply Discrepancy Report photo pilot program. This program reviews all supply discrepancy reports before being put away in their locations. A photo of the materiel is taken and uploaded into WebSDR, the supply discrepancy program, to expedite disposition from the item managers.  This process allows material examiners and identifiers to refine their technical knowledge while decreasing the idle time for suspend stock.
A true team player, Lee-Haynes conceptualized, created and coordinated in collaboration with the employees of the Inventory and Customer Service divisions to implement a lost receipt walkthrough process which resulted in streamlining and mitigated overlapping research processes from various stakeholders. As a direct result, the process decreased lost receipt average days from 30 to five, a decrease of 84 percent. The key to this success was concise communication and collection of evidential matter compiled through each step that allowed the Inventory Division to submit a completed packet to headquarters.
Additionally under her leadership, the receiving operation outperformed all DLA Distribution headquarters’ inbound key performance metrics for 27 months straight. As a direct result of her High Performance Leadership training that she utilizes, the division minimized error rates and denials to an average of 32 percent while increasing operational output.
Lastly, Lee-Hayne’s offers her expertise through assisting other sites. She recently volunteered to support the Logistics Readiness Center, Fort Carson, Colorado, in a quality assurance capacity. The center was drawing down and she assisted in creating the drawdown timeline and milestones for the team on the ground. Working with nine full time employees, contractors with limited knowledge of DLA processes and limited access, she encountered and overcame numerous obstacles during the eight week period. She vigorously trained and streamlined the transportation process utilizing the DLA Distribution San Joaquin Traffic Management Office for coordinating deliveries to DLA customers and pickups form the LRC.
During this time, her team still supported their local customer base while simultaneously prepping all 2,400 national stock numbers for shipment. Upon completion of the shipments, a wall to wall inventory was led by Lee-Haynes and all materiel was accounted for and shipped back to DLA. The drawdown was successful and was completed two days ahead of schedule.
“Natalie is a critical asset to the Mission Group team and personifies a high performing leader which is evident in her receiving this award,” concluded Winter.