In December 2008, EPA’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) conducted the Agency’s first completely internal Lean kaizen event. A team of OCFO managers and staff examined the office’s internal process for tracking and closing corrective actions. Corrective actions are developed as the result of findings from independent audits or self assessments (known as A-123 reviews). For tracking purposes, the corrective actions from audit and A-123 reviews have slightly different reporting requirements which led to separate processes when identifying results. During the kaizen event, the process was scrutinized from the point at which an approved corrective action plan is in 

place until the individual corrective action is completed. The existing process was not standard, required a large amount of staff time, involved duplication of effort, and could not easily provide summary reports for management.