Continuous improvement consists of incremental initiatives and innovations to achieve best practices. All expectations and objectives should be deployed to stakeholders clearly. Providing encouragement and implementing incentive plans should help in developing a culture of continuous improvement.
To successfully build a culture for continuous improvement, people in the organization need to be engaged and a part of the process.
Is necessary a clear vision and direction, a powerful reason to get there, good methodology for how to go about it and a desire to do it.
The goal is to be a more effective and efficient learning organization.
Dear Mahfuz
The culture of continuous improvement depends fundamentally on the commitement of the people and this can be verified by the effectiveness of training activities which will influence the quality improvement of the company by decreasing rates of noncompliance and waste and consequent improvement in customer satisfation
To build a culture of continuous improvement , the people in any organization should have shared vision ( @ Rolando) & collaborative work environment.
Continuous improvement is a philosophy which need to be embraced by the management and implemented throughout the organization. There are a number of tools that are available for the purpose such as Kaizen that can be routinely applied throughout the organization for continuous improvement.
http://www.wikihow.com/Develop-a-Culture-of-Continuous-Improvement
Dear Mahfuz
Personally, I feel that sustainable continuous improvement (CI) requires the following thinking and action::
1. Accept continuous improvement as a "VALUE" of the organization; inculcate it in all
2. CI is an attitude; shape it by linking it with rewards and recognition
3. Create a buy-in of the people in CI, so that they see in it why they should do it.
4. Do it not through direction but by empowerment/Involvement/suggestions
5. Develop a shared vision of the organization; and link it with that
6. Identify training need, deliver first-rate training, & measure its effectiveness.
7. Create an environment of continuous learning among all employees
8. Create an atmosphere of people care, dignity, positivity, inspiration, and fun
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=7&sid=62363081-6553-4982-80e5-20a79153f3b2%40sessionmgr4004&hid=4212&bdata=JnNpdG
The continuous innovation culture requires a stragique eve of all forms of innovation through existing organizations. This strategy must be known and disclosed within the organization. Not only the head of the company but also the employees and the different leaders of the organization.
By measuring employees' level of competency as part of their annual performance review. If weaknesses are identified, they will have to attend necessary training to improve their skills!
To build a culture for continuous improvement, people in the organization need to be engaged and a part of the process. Top management needs to firmly believe inthe continuous improvement culture as well.
W. Edwards Deming, a pioneer of the field, saw it as part of the 'system' whereby feedback from the process and customer were evaluated against organisational goals. The fact that it can be called a management process does not mean that it needs to be executed by 'management'; but rather merely that it makes decisions about the implementation of the delivery process and the design of the delivery process itself.
Some successful implementations use the approach known as Kaizen (the translation of kai (“change”) zen (“good”) is “improvement”). This method became famous from Imai's 1986 book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success.
Capitalism, creates wealth through advancing continuously to ever higher levels of productivity and technological sophistication; this process requires that the "old" be destroyed before the "new" can take over. Technological progress, the ultimate driving force of capitalism, requires the continuous discarding of obsolete factories, economic sectors, and even human skills. The system rewards the adaptable and the efficient; it punishes the redundant and the less productive.
Seeing the results of globalised economy, I am very skeptical if there would be a Continuous improvement, for all countries and for all organisations. The reason for that is that, this implies that finally all countries will be surplus, and to whom should they sell their products? All countries will be surplus!
I agree with Debi but would like to add that one must make sure that the Continuous Improvement Cycle is CLOSED and periodic.
The emphasis should be on development, or unfolding, or establishment, which is indeed a never-ending (=continuous) process. It is not just adopting a particular culture of principles and best practices, but rather convincing all stakeholders of the necessity or advantages of improvement, not only for the organisation as a whole, but for each member individually.
It helps a lot if a single person takes responsibility for the role of evangelist, i.e. the one person who represents symbolically as well as physically the common dedication to push the organisation further and further towards an agreed upon overall goal (which may itself be slowly changing as the environment changes and the organisation's self-image adapts itself).
Sometimes it helps if the organisation is aware of some existing, longer lasting problems and risks, but I wouldn't set too much on such negative motivations, which would not lead to *continuous* improvement, only to solving the current problem(s) and then the process stops.
There is not a single answer to how to start and implement such a process of continuous improvement, as it depends upon multiple characteristics of the organisation, e.g. size, structure, history, etc. However I like to refer here to the well-developed methods of continuous improvement in the engineering industry, which may be applicable beyond its origin. For one, there is the CMMI, Capability Maturity Model Integrated, with its nice five-level development philosophy. Also, there is a third edition of Lewis's approach to continuous improvement in software industry. Again, such worked-out approaches and methods should always be re-thought and adapted to the context of the organisation in question.
But: "There is an upper bound on the speed with which society can absorb progress, and I guess I have still to learn how to be more patient. ~ Edsger W. Dijkstra 1972
This of course also applies to any larger organisation and its managers!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1420080733/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
The culture of continuous improvement may be built by a corresponding culture of continuous appraisal and/or assessment!
Period!
Continuous improvement is in the mindset of the employees, not in the system or the management. Good systems will support this mindset, but mostly it will come from honest interpersonal relationships. I think that for genuine continuous improvement EVERY interaction about an employees efforts to improve something must be positive, meaning that even an unsuccessful attempt at improvement should be recognized and acknowledged for the effort, not the outcome. My choice of words is purposeful here. A carrot and stick model will be dysfunctional. Recognition and acknowledgement of efforts to improve in an honest work environment is more effective at developing motivation than a rewards based system. Rewards lead to comparison, jealousy and stress, which will reduce the quality of the interpersonal relationships and the team spirit. Too much appraisal and assessment is similarly destructive. Any assessment should be informative without penalty unless there is an issue of diminished performance.
Basically, this urge to develop continuously should come from within! It is a culture in itself which motivates one to develop and inculcate values continuously. One can try to imbibe it, provided the receiver has a mental acceptance towards it. The leader plays an important role in this.
I think that a continuous development of an organization must be based on a continuous development of its human resource. Employees must be part of the strategy of improvement through rewards, continuous learning, democracy in the leadership, managerial and decision making posts. People must be motivated for the organization benefit which is in turn their benefit and success.
Continuous improvement, or what is commonly referred to as "KAIZEN" can be sustained by having short term and long term objectives which boil down to all aspects of the organisation.
This would encompass all the constituent components of the organisation:
(1) improvement of the physical infrastructure,
(2) improvement of personnel skills,
(3) improvement of the management apparatus, i.e. management tools,
(4) improvement of the structure of the organisation
Dear Mohamed , I suspect that by themselves these 4 components you have listed may deliver the intended short-term and long-term results.
The most important ones have been left out. They are, among others, leadership and what dear Fairouz might call as employee motivation strategy of the organization.
Dear @Mahfuz, This is a very important and challenging issue, and only few administrations can fulfill this requirement. In my opinion, I think that sharing is the most important factor to stimulate the idea of developing a culture of continuous improvement in any organization.
Dear Debi,
Indeed, you are right, but leadership, employee motivation and strategy are the outcome of the interactions between the four components of the organisation. Especially the interaction of the structural elements and the managerial apparatus.
Of course, as you may already know, there always assumptions.
The consittuent components of an organisation are dynamic and should produce more than the sum of the parts if continuous improvement is to be sought.
According to different sources, continuous improvement (CI) is an ongoing effort aimed at improving the current business process used to provide goods or services to consumers. CI is not just a managerial approach; it helps develop a culture of innovation and constant improvement within the company. CI focuses on improving the bottom line by saving money through increasing efficiency and raising sales through enhancing quality.
A culture of CI is one in which individuals are growing, learning and contributing to the overall goal. Through ongoing communication, information sharing, assessments and rewards, individuals and groups can progress towards personal and organizational goals.
CI allows organizations to evolve. If we can improve faster than our competitors then we will be able to secure more of the market for ourselves in the future. This is why CI is such a big deal. A good CI culture will deliver a rapid evolution into any business. Working hard just isn't enough, we also need to think about how we can do things better. Here are the steps for developing a culture of CI
1. Communicate expectations. In a corporate environment, individuals may be required to be punctual, attend regular meetings, deliver projects on time and contribute to the enhancement of products and processes. All expectations should be communicated clearly and regularly in order to develop a culture of CI.
2. Deliver information and training. Continuous development requires advancement in knowledge and skills. Schedule ongoing training sessions. Identify the individual skills required for CI and provide opportunities for group members to strengthen those skills. Training sessions may take place daily, weekly or periodically, depending on the particular skill. Answer questions. As people learn new information, they will have questions. Make yourself available for providing guidance and feedback.
3. Assess knowledge and skills. Whether you are managing a corporate team, use assessment tools to gauge the progress of individuals. In corporate environments, skills assessments may take the shape of computerized skills tests or informal observations of employee knowledge. A Continual Improvement Process (CIP) can be developed to provide this function. CIP makes sure that the organizational structure of the company complements and supports the people, knowledge, technology, roles, and responsibilities and that they work in stride together in the most efficient process. This strategic approach, if correctly implemented, helps companies improve process cycle times, reduce resource consumption, increase reliability of the process and improve the quality of the final product. A good example of an off-the-shelf CI process is the CAPA Manager from Adaptive BMS. This system allows all employees to upload opportunities for improvement (or tasks) to a central improvement register. These tasks are then allocated to the relevant stakeholders in the business. Improvement tasks are then tracked through to completion by the system.
4. Explain to everyone why they matter. People need to know that their contributions make a difference. Their ideas, questions and thoughts are all important contributions that can potentially generate new and more productive ways of doing things. Tell your employees that the company wants them to improve what they do. This is the simplest and the most important thing to do. Communicate to your organization that you want to continually improve. State this intention through company strategy reviews, company newsletters and team briefings. This is the most effective way to get the CI culture moving. This simple step can be over looked by some organizations in favor of investing in Six Sigma, Lean training and fancy consultants. Deploying a CI culture is easy when the staff is empowered to improve. To help the business improves faster than the competition, we should aim to empower the entire workforce to make improvement directly. This has the advantage of boosting our improvement capacity; it also allows for far more hidden improvement opportunities to be realized. Some organizations may tend to channel improvement activity through dedicated improvement teams or individuals. This approach can be limited due to the lack of improvement capacity. All staff can be encouraged to engage in improvement activity, maximizing the volume of change and improvement that can be achieved.
To achieve total staff empowerment a robust, but the simple change process should be introduced that allows all staff to make changes. The focus should be on allowing all employees to make controlled changes by following a well-designed change process.
5. Provide encouragement in order to develop a culture of CI. Praise individuals when they show progress in the mastery of a specific skill. This is especially important when they have worked hard to learn and improve. Hold recognition ceremonies. Publicly praise individuals for their excellence in a particular achievement to increase motivation. Be specific about what they have achieved and why this is important. This also encourages others to work harder to improve their skills and knowledge. Establish incentive programs. The potential of being awarded with money or gifts can motivate individuals to work on CI. Offer promotions for continuous improvements. At work, a promotion may mean greater pay or the opportunity to work on more interesting projects.
6. To show consistency in your approach. Whatever strategies you use for engendering growth and development, stick with the plan if it is working. Individuals need to know that the rewards program they find so motivating will, in fact, be present 6 months down the line when they have finally developed the necessary skills. Start a CIP) register. CI culture is all about driving forward change and improvement, lots of it. To enable this to happen effectively there needs to be a process to capture, distribute and track opportunities for improvement within the business.
7. Allow room for experimentation and mistakes. People learn through a process of trial and error. For example, a computer programmer may have to develop a dozen different versions of a product before he creates the most ideal version.
Hello Mahfuz
My experience on continuous improvement with multi product and process environment is with CAPA and SIx Sigma...
CAPA is corrective Action and Preventive Action, to me it is largely a subset of Six Sigma Quality Management
CAPA is a must on field quality issues and auditable by Regulatory Authority in Medical products... As pointed out by Kamal well, it starts with Shared Vision of the organisation on how to prevent future events of similar nature not only in the current product and also in similar variants.
Kind Regards
Ramanan
@ Costas Drossos : You are right, almost everything regarding quality improvement in organisations goes back to W. Edwards Deming and his mentor Walter A. Shewhart. Here is an interesting article about his professional life.
Continuous improvements (or) KAIZENS are the way of life in industries....There is a continuous search for reducing COST, improving performance, Reducing Product weight and Eliminating wastes etc....
The process of Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) moved from Pharma industries into all other industries...Enclosed a Poster on cGMP....
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262098570_Current_Good_Manufacturing_Practices_%28cGMP%29_Poster?ev=prf_pub
Data Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) Poster
Dear @Paul, Thank you for the interesting article about W. Edwards Deming and Walter A. Shewhart.
Once the Principle of Continous Improvement has been understood (Cognitive Level) and accepted (Conative Level), time has come for you to realize that a single principle can not be sufficient to capture the complexities of modern life and work. If you really want to grow as a knowing and acting individual in a large human organisation you have to turn to one of the most extraordinary intellectual undertakings I have seen which try to decipher the many codes (theories and models, languages and narratives) required to fully understand what is going on on the level of human interaction in organisation: the THEE-ONLINE project by Warren Kingston. I admit that I really don't yet fully understand what it represents (it's not an ordinary theory of the kind which can be empirically confirmed or refuted), but is really fascinating and you might give it a try, no, not one, but many. Complex things demand a lot of time to get acquainted with, like mathematics or logic.
http://www.thee-online.com/mywebhelp/default.htm#6.%20Deciding-and-Achieving/D%20Management%20Culture/4.0.2 The Spiral Trajectory.htm
Sense of Belonging and Contribution to the Organization on the part of the Employees will go a long way in developing a culture of continuous improvement in organizations.This can be achieved by the Methods suggested by Shafig.A little bit of Appreciation of the work done and some incentive like Bonus when the Target is Reached are all that are needed in Motivating the Employee.
P.S.
In research conducted between 2009 and 2011 in 30 large companies with plants in Argentina, we found nine key factors that seem to explain the difference between successful cases and those who are not. However, a later study, in which we are working, makes us think that these key factors have an intangible component that is difficult to observe. This component is mainly related to internal communications and between levels, the involvement of leaders and managers and consensus building. These issues seem to be affecting climate and cultural change.
http://mejoracontinuatotal.blogspot.com.ar/2013/09/key-factors-for-continuous-improvement.html
The Toyota culture of continuous improvement considers everyone within the organization, from executives to shop-floor workers, is challenged to use their initiative and creativity to experiment and learn.
Our team visited the Toyota plant in Argentina and we found that the TPS works the same anywhere. In the last year they developed more than 600 quality control circles and implemented more than 40,000 suggestions from your staff.
We take this plant, along with other from Gerdau group (Brazilian steel corporation) and Bunge (Agroindustry) as benchmarks for the construction of a model of continuous improvement.
Tobias, I think that the word 'recognising' achievement is more meaningful than 'rewarding' after reading the maerial from Hector. Rewarding is beginning to be linked with loss of intrinsic motiation, which I think Toyota manages to engender in its workers.
There is a famous saying, "Quality is the state of Mind". It is the mindset (i.e. attitude) of an employee or an organization to produce a product or service with zero defects. In order to enforce CQI, it is paramount to prepare the employees to work towards that Zero defect. Even though, there are several factors are responsible for implementing CQI, the employees attitude is most important one to achieve that.
I think to build a successful culture for continuous improvement you need at the first stage a qualified staff and has a commitment to do the required tasks.
At the second stage, you should aware the staff about the benefits of assure the quality.
I recommend for further readings about management optimization its a new trend of TQM.
Regards
Thank you dear Islam. I agree with you in the points you have mentioned for building a continuous improvement culture.
Continuous improvement is a multifaceted approach that addresses: training for primary prevention; obtaining external expertise; changing or re-assigning personnel; tool, equipment or machinery changes; software upgrades; communication; return to work programs and culture changes.
An organisation facing the integration of such a comprehensive list, needs to understand that starting on that path is a long-term commitment. "Notably, no cases of narrowly scoped interventions were reported responsible for the changes in claim rates; instead, firms initiated between six to twelve changes to bring about OHS improvements" (Robson et al. 2016, Par. 4.1). There isn't a preferred path of implementation either, since companies like Honda, Toyota, Panasonic, Shell and Canon all have different philosophies which emphasise different aspects of continuous improvement.
Continuous improvement is considered to be a way of life, not a one-time remedy to fix what ails companies. Small but frequent changes are suggested by workers and management alike: "The two key features of Kaizen are incremental and continuous improvement and involvement of the entire workforce in that process." It mimics Zen Buddhism in that it effects monumental changes with small efforts. The principle does not necessarily mean large financial investments but includes a "strong commitment by executives, long-term orientation, a sense of oneness, trust and teamwork among all levels of personnel, and willing cooperation of workers" (Ohno et al. 1997).
References
Robson, L. et al. (2016). Important factors in common among organizations making large improvement in OHS performance: Results of an exploratory multiple case study. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753516000679
Ohno, I., Ohno K., Uesu, S., (1997) Introducing KAIZEN in Africa (Ch1). retrieved from http://www.grips.ac.jp/forum/af-growth/support_ethiopia/document/Jun09PMhosono_Ch.1.pdf
I think to create/develop a Continuous improvement Culture you need to ask How more than What.
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