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
Increment or incremental may refer to:
*Incrementalism, a theory (also used in politics as a synonym for gradualism)
*Increment and decrement operators, the operators ++ and -- in computer programming
*Incremental computing
*Incremental backup, wh ...
" improvement over time or "breakthrough" improvement all at once. Delivery (customer valued) processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their
efficiency,
effectiveness
Effectiveness 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.
Etymology
The ori ...
and flexibility.
Some see CIPs 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 discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business p ...
,
quality management
Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not ...
,
project management
Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. T ...
, and
program management
Program management, is the process of managing several related projects, often with the intention of improving an organization's performance. It is distinct from ''project'' management.
In practice and in its aims, program management is oft ...
).
W. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical ...
, 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'.' "
Kaizen
Some successful implementations use the approach known as
kaizen (the translation of ('change') ('good') is 'improvement'). This method became famous from
Imai's 1986 book ''Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success.''
* Feedback: The core principle of CIP is the (self) reflection of processes.
* Efficiency: The purpose of CIP is the identification, reduction, and elimination of suboptimal processes.
* Evolution: The emphasis of CIP is on incremental, continual steps rather than giant leaps.
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 CIP. 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 (plan–do–check–act or 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 cycle, or the control ...
(plan, do, check, act) or (plan, do, check, adjust) cycle supports continuous improvement and kaizen. It provides a process for improvement 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
W. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical ...
and often called the Deming cycle though
W. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical ...
referred to it as the Shewhart cycle.
Walter A. Shewhart back in the 1920s was working at
Western Electric Company
The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment m ...
with
W. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. Educated initially as an electrical engineer and later specializing in mathematical ...
and
Joseph M. Juran
Joseph Moses Juran (December 24, 1904 – February 28, 2008) was a Romanian-born American engineer and management consultant. He was an evangelist for quality and quality management, having written several books on those subjects. He was the brot ...
. 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 at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis.
Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters.
...
, 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 life; 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 CIP-concept is also used in
environmental management systems (EMS), such as
ISO 14000
ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (b) ...
and
EMAS. The term "continual improvement", not "continuous improvement", is used in
ISO 14000
ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (b) ...
, 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. CIP in EMS 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 CIP. Also, CIP in EMS 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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See also
* Benchmarking
* ISO/IEC 15504
ISO/IEC 15504 ''Information technology – Process assessment'', also termed Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (SPICE), is a set of technical standards documents for the computer software development process and related bu ...
for software development process/management
* Lean manufacturing
* Minimum viable product
A minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development.
A focus on releasing an MVP means that developers potentially avoid ...
* Perpetual beta
Perpetual beta is the keeping of software or a system at the beta development stage for an extended or indefinite period of time. It is often used by developers when they continue to release new features that might not be fully tested. Perpetual ...
* Training Within Industry (TWI)
* Operational excellence
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Continuous Improvement Process
Japanese business terms
Lean manufacturing
Quality management