Improvement
“You will stay ahead competitively only if you acknowledge that no advantage and no success is ever permanent. The winners are those who keep moving.” John Browne (Ref 1)
An excellent business has effective and efficient ways of generating improvement ideas and translating them into delivered results. Improvement work involves all employees and is integrated into the core business process. It is seen as a key responsibility of the line management team - not a task allocated to a separate support group.
Improvement focusses on the internal business systems as well as business outcomes, with the aim of eliminating waste and developing agility to respond to the changing needs of the business. Both continuous improvement and step-change innovations form part of the improvement program.
An excellent improvement program requires:
- A process for highlighting the waste and improvement potential in all areas of the business. (Lean Manufactuing, Value Stream Mapping, Benchmarking)
- A means of stimulating and capturing improvement ideas from all employees. (Visual Workplace)
- A process for valuing and prioritizing ideas, so that effort is focused on the highest leverage improvements.
- An effective methodology for implementing improvements. (DMAIC)
- Ownership of the line management.
- Business resources with the time and skills to drive the implementation.
- Tracking and reporting of performance against improvement objectives, and effective corrective actions.
A model of an effective improvement process is shown below.
