Continuous Improvement : Based on a

Continuous Improvement : Based on a Japanese concept called kaizen, continuous improvement is the philosophy of continually seeking ways to improve processes. Continuous improvement involves identifying benchmarks of excellent practice andinstilling a sense of employee ownership in the process. The focus of continuous improvement projects is to reduce waste, such as reducing the length of time required to process requests for loans at a bank, the amount of scrap generated at a milling machine, or the number of employee injuries at a construction site. The basis of the continuous improvement philosophy is the belief that virtually any aspect of a process can be improved and that the people most closely associated with a process are in the best position to identify the changes that should be made. The idea is not to wait until a massive problem occurs before acting.Employees should be given problem-solving tools, such as the statistical process control (SPC) methods we discuss later in this chapter, and a sense of ownership of the process to be improved. A sense of operator ownership emerges when employees feel a responsibility for the processes and methods they use and take pride in the quality of the service or product they produce. It comes from participation on work teams and in problem-solving activities, which instill in employees a feeling that they have some control over their workplace and tasks.Most firms actively engaged in continuous improvement train their work teams to use the plando-study-act cycle for problem solving. Another name for this approach is the Deming Wheel, named after the renowned statistician W. Edwards Deming who taught quality improvement techniques to the Japanese after World War II. Figure 3.2 shows this cycle, which lies at the heart of the continuous improvement philosophy. The cycle comprises the following steps: