A continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process (abbreviated as CIP or CI), is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek " incremental" improvement over time or "breakthrough" improvement all at once. Delivery (customer valued) processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their

efficiency Efficiency is the often measurable ability to avoid making mistakes or wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time while performing a task. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without waste. ...

effectiveness Effectiveness or effectivity is the capability of producing a desired result or the ability to produce desired output. When something is deemed effective, it means it has an intended or expected outcome, or produces a deep, vivid impression. Et ...

and flexibility. Some see continual improvement processes as a meta-process for most management systems (such as

business process management Business process management (BPM) is the discipline in which people use various methods to Business process discovery, discover, Business process modeling, model, Business analysis, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and Business process auto ...

quality management Total quality management, Total Quality management (TQM), ensures that an organization, product, or service consistently performs as intended, as opposed to Quality Management, which focuses on work process and procedure standards. It has four mai ...

project management Project management is the process of supervising the work of a Project team, team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project initiation documentation, project documentation, crea ...

, and

program management Program management deals with overseeing a group or several projects that align with a company’s organizational strategy, goals, and mission. These Project, projects, are intended to improve an Organizational performance, organization's perfo ...

W. Edwards Deming William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American business theorist, composer, economist, industrial engineer, management consultant, statistician, and writer. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later ...

, 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. A broader definition is that of the Institute of Quality Assurance who defined "continuous improvement as a gradual never-ending change which is: '... focused on increasing the effectiveness and/or efficiency of an organisation to fulfil its policy and objectives. It is not limited to quality initiatives. Improvement in business strategy, business results, customer, employee and supplier relationships can be subject to continual improvement. Put simply, it means 'getting better all the time'.' " The key features of continual improvement process in general are: * Feedback: The core principle of continual process improvement is the (self) reflection of processes * Efficiency: The purpose of continual improvement process is the identification, reduction, and elimination of suboptimal processes * Evolution: The emphasis of continual improvement process is on incremental, continual steps rather than giant leaps

Kaizen

Some successful implementations use the approach known as

kaizen is a Japanese concept in business studies which asserts that significant positive results may be achieved due the cumulative effect of many, often small (and even trivial), improvements to all aspects of a company's operations. Kaizen is put ...

(the translation of ('change') ('good') is 'improvement'). This method became famous from Imai's 1986 book ''Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success.'' Key features of kaizen include: * Improvements are based on many small changes rather than the radical changes that might arise from Research and Development * As the ideas come from the workers themselves, they are less likely to be radically different, and therefore easier to implement * Small improvements are less likely to require major capital investment than major process changes * The ideas come from the talents of the existing workforce, as opposed to using research, consultants or equipment – any of which could be very expensive * All employees should continually be seeking ways to improve their own performance * It helps encourage workers to take ownership for their work, and can help reinforce team working, thereby improving worker motivation. The elements above are the more tactical elements of continual improvement processes. The more strategic elements include deciding how to increase the value of the delivery process output to the customer (effectiveness) and how much flexibility is valuable in the process to meet changing needs.

PDCA

The

PDCA PDCA or plan–do–check–act (sometimes called plan–do–check–adjust) is an iterative design and management method used in business for the control and continual improvement of processes and products. It is also known as the Shewhart cy ...

(plan, do, check, act) or (plan, do, check, adjust) cycle supports continuous improvement and kaizen. It provides a process for improvement which can be used since the early design (planning) stage of any process, system, product or service.

PDSA

The PDSA (plan, do, study, act) cycle is often credited to

and often called the Deming cycle though W. Edwards Deming referred to it as the Shewhart cycle.

Walter A. Shewhart Walter Andrew Shewhart (pronounced like "shoe-heart"; March 18, 1891 – March 11, 1967) was an American physicist, engineer and statistician. He is sometimes also known as the ''grandfather of Statistical process control, statistical quality con ...

back in the 1920s was working at

Western Electric Company Western Electric Co., Inc. was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company that operated from 1869 to 1996. A subsidiary of the AT&T Corporation for most of its lifespan, Western Electric was the primary manufacturer, supplier, ...

with W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran. Shewhart took the standard academic scientific method of inductive and deductive thinking, used in

hypothesis testing A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data provide sufficient evidence to reject a particular hypothesis. A statistical hypothesis test typically involves a calculation of a test statistic. T ...

, and converted it to a simple notion. When one does something, they plan it, do it, study it, and act on its results – the PDSA cycle. This was a far simpler notion to use and inform the shop floor of Western Electric while building telephones, where many workers would not and could not understand the scientific method. In fact, the PDSA notion could easily be applied to everyday activities such as driving a car to work. Thus, the PDSA cycle was very easy to relate to by Western's workforce and gained the buy-in needed.

In environmental management

The continual improvement process concept is also used in environmental management systems (EMS), such as

ISO 14000 The ISO 14000 family is a set of international standards for environment management systems. It was developed in March 1996 by International Organization for Standardization. The goal of these standards is to help organizations (a) minimize how t ...

and EMAS. The term "continual improvement", not "continuous improvement", is used in

, and is understood to refer to an ongoing series of small or large-scale improvements which are each done discretely, i.e. in a step-wise fashion. Several differences exist between the CIP concept as it is applied in quality management and environmental management. Continual improvement in environmental management systems aims to improve the natural consequences of products and activities, not the products and activities as such. Secondly, there is no client-orientation in EMS-related continual improvement processes. Also, continual improvement processes in environmental management systems is not limited to small, incremental improvements as in kaizen, it also includes innovations of any scale.

ISO change from ''continuous'' to ''continual''

In the late 1990s, the developers of the ISO 9001:2000 standard—which addressed quality management systems and principles—debated whether or not to update the use of the word ''continuous'' to ''continual''. ISO Technical Committee 176 and regulatory representatives ultimately decided that "continuous was unenforceable because it meant an organization had to improve minute by minute, whereas, continual improvement meant step-wise improvement or improvement in segments". The committee reportedly did not base the change on dictionary definitions or the standard's vocabulary. This change ran contrary to the common usage of ''continuous'' in the standard and other prior business management documentation. The concept of continual improvement is the core of the British Standards Institute's 2019 publication: BS 8624 Guide to Continual improvement: Methods for quantification. BS 8624 describes requirements for continual improvement and provides methods and examples of recognized techniques.Homvela
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References