A Brief Overview about How Continuous Improvement Programs Can Benefits Your Business By making small, incremental improvements within a business, continuous improvement is the on-going effort made by the businesses to improve products, processes and services. Continuous improvement processes are implemented in any organization based on the popular belief that small incremental changes will add up to result in major business process improvement over time. Why to implement continuous improvement plan? Shorten the time from idea to implementation Increase skills and knowledge sharing Maximize your “failure ROI Increase the opportunity for radical improvements How to implement continuous improvement plan? Plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle Plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle, also known as deming cycle or shewhart cycle, is one the most widely used tools in different business organizations across the globe for continuous improvement. Step 1: Plan It is important for businesses to identify an opportunity for improvement into their business and systematically plan for small incremental change. Step 2: Do In order to make continuous improvement initiatives successful on larger scale, it is important for businesses to implement the change on a small scale under the supervision and guidance of qualified and experienced consultants who hold expertise in their area of work. Step 3: Check Consultants use small data for the purpose of analyzing the results of the small change into the culture of the organization. After rigorous analysis, they determine whether the small changes made a difference in an organization and improve the products, services or business processes.
Step 4: Act It is important to understand that if the small changes did not make a significant or any difference into different processes, products or services of a company then consultants should recommend companies to begin the cycle of continuous improvement process again. But, they should systematically implement the change on a wider scale, if it was successful in improving the products, services and processes. Moreover, consultants should continuously assess the results of the change for better results and improvements into an organization.
ď ś Factors that makes a continuous improvement program successful Continuous improvement program is implemented by businesses across the globe to change the culture of their organization for focusing on exploring different opportunities rather than solving complicated organizational problems. It is more about specific improvements into an organization to improve their products, services and business processes. In order to achieve specific results, it is important to hire a professional continuous improvement consultant or consultancy firm to develop and implement continuous improvement plan systematically and within promised time frame. This post discusses some of the important factors that are essential to make continuous improvement programs successful. Shift to long-term mind set
Management of an organization is often focused on whether they are going to meet their specific monthly, quarterly or annual target within expected time frame. For them, it would be very difficult to plan and implement improvement program that will only make impact over a much longer term. To deliver outstanding products and services to its customers, the company required to look at the bigger picture or long-term impact of their work. They should understand that short term goals can be tolerated if it can result in the long term benefits of the company. Benefits of implementing continuous improvement process Reduced waste Improved product, service and process quality Reduced rework time Faster response time Driving down costs Retain or gain customers through innovative services products