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Continuous Improvement can take the form of incremental changes made over time to remain competitive on today's markets, or just adapting and strengthening resilience against these changes.
Continuous Improvement offers results without all-at-once dramatic adjustments that might otherwise require drastic action to effect change. Continuous improvement can help make positive changes if there are areas for enhancement in your workplace or you wish to become an industry leader.
What Is Continuous Improvement?
Continuous improvement involves making incremental modifications that lead to tangible advancement.
The Continuous Improvement Method has quickly gained international adoption as a systematic approach to operational excellence.
Businesses from every sector worldwide have implemented this practice as part of their business goals for organizational improvement.
Continuous improvement stems from the belief that there is always room for growth. The objective is to minimize waste, maximize resources and empower employees with tools for making incremental improvements that will contribute to an enhanced bottom line of a company.
Continuous improvement typically has three main goals in mind. These goals include:
- Improved tools and materials
- Improve relationships and people.
- Improve the Work Environment
Sometimes removing unnecessary software and improving documentation of how you work are both essential. Also, this effort involves upskilling employees as a means of upholding and developing staff within your entire organization.
And last but not least, improving employee safety - both physically and psychologically - will contribute to its long-term viability.
The Four Stages Of Continuous Improvement
Plan-Do Check-Act is the acronym for Plan-Do Continuous Improvement. These are the four stages to continuous improvement.
Plan: Brainstorming
Find areas for improvement and formulate an action plan with management in mind. Perhaps, for instance, your conversion rate has fallen below industry norms; therefore you decide to send an email nurturing sequence and call your leads in order to address this shortcoming.
Do : Testing Solutions
Implement any change on a small-scale, once you have identified and prioritized an opportunity. This helps measure its success objectively - for instance in email sequences this may mean sending just 20% of leads in an email sequence at first.
Check: Verifying Effectiveness
Was The Change Successful? Before rolling it out throughout our organization, it's necessary to determine whether our change actually worked.
A test's success may be determined based on whether 20% more leads convert compared with those not receiving nurture emails (at 80% conversion rates)
Act: Implementing A Solution
Now is the time for your organization to reap the benefits of its solution once its effectiveness has been demonstrated.
Continuous Improvement Methods
Continuous improvement can be achieved in several ways. Here are five:
- The Lean Method
- The Kanban Method
- Six Sigma
- Total Quality Management
- Agile Methodology
Let's take a look at them all.
The Lean Method
Lean is a continuous improvement framework originally implemented within manufacturing industries but later widely adopted across other fields and businesses.
Lean aims to increase efficiency while decreasing waste through streamlining processes and eliminating non-value added activities.
The Kanban method
Kanban can help your workflow and visualize your work more clearly, by breaking tasks down into smaller ones and tracking each task from its inception through completion.
This enables you to spot areas of inefficiency or bottlenecks so they can be eliminated more effectively and optimized further.
Six Sigma
Six Sigma is an analytical framework which can assist businesses to identify and eliminate defects from their processes.
Its aim is to reduce defects to Six Sigma levels (3.4 errors for every million opportunities).
Total Quality Management
Total Quality Management (TQM) provides a framework to ensure that products meet or even surpass customer expectations.
TQM emphasizes continuous improvement by systematically identifying and resolving quality issues in an organized fashion.
Agile Methodology
Agile is a framework to manage software development projects effectively and efficiently.
Agile emphasizes iterative development and rapid prototyping techniques as well as continuous feedback from stakeholders; its aim being enabling teams to rapidly produce high quality products quickly.
Why Is It Important To Continuously Improve?
Productivity And Efficiency Increases
You can streamline your workflow by identifying the areas that can be improved. This will reduce wasted resources and time.
Your team will become more productive as a result.
Employee Engagement And Relationships Improved
Continuous improvement can be defined as being equally concerned with people and relationships as it is about tools.
Employees look for ways to enhance communication via feedback loops brought on by continuous improvement initiatives.
Employees who believe they are part of an improvement process are more invested and invested in the success of their company, leading to better relations between managers and employees and creating a positive working environment.
Reduce Waste
Enhance the quality of your service or product by eliminating defects and streamlining processes, both to make customers happier as well as save money by decreasing reworked and replaced items.
Cost Savings
Continuous Improvement can save money beyond simply cutting waste. By streamlining processes and decreasing inventory needs, as well as quickly recognizing mistakes to avoid expensive fixes down the line, continuous improvement offers additional ways of cutting expenses.
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Improved Customer Satisfaction
By eliminating waste, products or services will become more likely to satisfy customer demands, increasing customer loyalty across your organization.
Reduced Cycle Time
Making small improvements quickly is one of the advantages of doing so. You can then get your product to market and see results faster.
Innovation And Increased Productivity Are Key To Staying Competitive
Continuous Improvement can keep you ahead of your competition by encouraging exploration of innovative methods to streamline processes.
Making small adjustments quickly and inexpensively enables you to test new ideas to see whether they warrant further exploration. Establish a system to allow small, ongoing changes. Your progress won't cease!
Changes Can Be Adapted To With Agility
To remain successful in today's environment, businesses need to quickly adapt to change. Resilience alone cannot guarantee success - business must hone it as part of its survival strategies.
Adaptivity must become part of their DNA in order to remain viable.
Continuous Improvement: 6 Steps To Success
The most common way to improve your company's performance is by following these six steps.
1. Check Your Current State
Mapping out current processes allows you to gain an accurate assessment of where you stand today. This may prove an essential resource.
Document every step - even those you deem irrelevant. Also list how and in what order your team needs to complete them throughout the entire process.
Make use of process mapping software to draw out a flowchart representing each step in your ordered process so you can see each detail from above.
Other project management tools can assist in this step of your process. Continuous improvement involves people, relationships and environments as much as tools or materials used.
Begin to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.
2. Find The Root Causes Of Problems
It's important to understand why your process is failing. Ask these five questions to identify the root of a problem:
- What happened?
- When did this happen?
- Who were the participants?
- What was the group doing?
- What conditions led to it?
These prompts may help us discover:
- Demo requests that never came through
- The form was returned to the applicant a week after it was filled out
- Our sales team, our lead, and our CRM were all involved
- Our CRM informed us that a lead had filled out the form. Then, our sales team qualified it and invited them to the call.
- Leads have to wait for two days before receiving an invitation
This process improvement analysis reveals two possible root causes, namely the length of time it takes to receive the demo call invitation and the tone used in the invitation.
3. Create A Solution
You can now create a plan for addressing the problem. The people responsible for each step in your process should be included in the plan.
Choose the most effective solution from a list of possible solutions.
4. Solution: Implement It
It's now time to develop a plan of action for your solution. Included in this plan are a timeline, a list with responsibilities and any other resources that you will need.
Put the plan into practice.
5. Evaluation Of Results
It's now time to test your solution. Compare the results with your original improvement goals. If your solution didn't work out as you planned, return to step 3 and come up with another idea.
6. Standardize The Process
Congratulations if your solution was effective! To make sure the process goes smoothly from here on out. Create standard operating procedures (SOPs) that outline each step in your process and can easily be understood and followed by anyone.
Create checklists and flowcharts as reference tools. Always bear in mind that continuous improvement is never complete, so create feedback loops to continually optimize processes.
Read More: Establishing Process Improvement Strategies for Technology Services
What Is A Continuous Improvement Plan?
Continuous improvement plays a pivotal role in innovation - whether new products, businesses or services are being introduced or incremental innovations are being undertaken - by creating opportunities to test ideas quickly before being put to market.
Overall, continuous improvement plays an essential part in supporting both innovations.
As demonstrated above, continuous improvement is a fundamental principle of innovation and has already been extensively addressed on our blog.
But to provide context in writing this article it remains essential to briefly define what continuous improvement involves.
Continuous improvement refers to making an active effort toward personal or corporate progress through deliberate investment in lifelong improvement, whether that involves yourself, products, processes or services.
Here, the key word is conscious; to improve something deliberately requires having a plan. A continuous improvement plan acts as your guide towards decisions which lead to improvements.
Though we have used both terms interchangeably in this article, they both refer to exactly the same thing. No matter whether or not you choose a plan or program as your term of choice, both should include preparation, implementation and execution for successful performance.
Continuous Improvement Programs provide organizations with a way to standardize improvement throughout their organization.
While standardized procedures may prove useful in some companies, larger organizations should use continuous improvement as best practice while tailoring an improvement program to each department or team's specific needs. Best practice for continuous improvement lies in its integration into key processes and practices as an organizational mindset.
An effective continuous improvement plan must address both organization-wide goals and objectives as well as issues and opportunities unique to individual divisions or departments; R&D may necessitate different tactics than marketing in this respect, for instance.
Leaders recognize the significance of constant improvement as an essential aspect of attaining excellence and pioneering fresh concepts.
While some leaders strive to make improvements daily through systematic means alone, process improvement analysts prefer an analytic approach with greater dedication from within their teams.
Large organizations tend to lack enough workers who are capable of carrying this out on their own and could therefore miss many opportunities for innovation.
Let us now demonstrate why an efficient continuous improvement plan would be an optimal approach.
Why Do You Need To Have A Plan For Continuous Improvement?
Why would it be important for me to create an action plan for continuous improvement that details what steps can be taken daily? People often fail to keep their New Year's Resolutions.
By having an action plan in place and adhering to it, we could help mitigate against failure in keeping these resolutions.
Race to the finish is often an obstacle; we become so focused on reaching an overwhelming goal that it becomes overwhelming.
Break down the larger goal into smaller steps, making small adjustments every day; this will bring about changes to mindset and behavior, leading to positive transformation of both mindset and behavior - something which requires planning in order to accomplish effectively.
Continuous improvements should be seen as an ongoing journey with specific goals in mind, with completion only marking its conclusion once goals have been accomplished.
If we want behavior changes embedded into culture, this journey should never stop being undertaken, meaning daily tasks should continue being used towards improvement.
At some point in your daily activities that contribute to improvement, you must prioritize and make conscious choices between these daily tasks that contribute.
Continuous improvement cannot be applied equally across all areas - this would be both difficult and unproductive in both personal life and organizational teams alike. A continuous improvement plan should take this into consideration.
Let us now examine some of the specific benefits associated with planning for continuous improvements:
Focus And Direction
As many employees work towards similar organizational goals, a continuous improvement program provides clear direction and focus.
A continuous improvement plan brings goals of the organization as well as roles and responsibilities of everyone involved into focus while explaining why something should or needs to be improved upon. Visualizing goals, roles, and methods to meet them helps reinforce objectives.
Win Over Stakeholders
Successful innovation results from engaging relevant stakeholders to implement continuous improvement practices.
An effective plan will win over all stakeholders - be they employees who bring valuable insight on how and what improvements can be made, or shareholders with valuable feedback for improving it. Even if some don't initially agree with it, their comments and input can only strengthen it over time. Every organization contains some members who resist change; taking the long view can help both sides adapt more successfully to it.
Encourage Proactivity
People tend to react without thinking through how to respond. Planned actions may help shape the future of their businesses by taking proactive steps that influence its trajectory - these future projections give time and space for strategic consideration rather than constant firefighting efforts.
Enhance Overall Business Performance
Consistent improvement yields tangible business advantages; having a plan in place can facilitate this outcome. Continuous improvement cuts costs, reduces waste and increases operational efficiencies - these benefits are already well known to leaders; nevertheless, it's essential that organizations remember a realistic yet ambitious improvement plan can have a hugely positive effect on their bottom lines.
How To Create A Plan For Continuous Improvement
Planning for continuous improvement should be straightforward. A solid continuous improvement strategy must possess three essential characteristics - being practical, operational and strategic.
Let's briefly review each topic before looking at key steps to develop a continuous improvement plan.
It's not necessary to complicate things, because it will discourage people from participating and make it more difficult to implement and communicate the plan throughout the organization.
After all, it's just about small daily steps that will have a huge impact in the long run.
Strategic
Strategic planning is required to ensure that continuous improvement takes into account the vision, goals and objectives of an organization.
It is not beneficial to the organization to improve here and there without a specific goal.
Operational
The strategic approach provides direction. However, the operational side explains how the plan is to be implemented, including who is responsible for it, the timeframes, the resources required, and the metrics used to measure success. In order to prepare for continuous improvement, you will also need to determine which processes and tools work best.
Let's now go over a few steps to get you started on a plan for continuous improvement or refine an existing plan.
1. Assessment Of The Current State
This first step involves gathering information to help you identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of your current products, processes or services.
2. Plan The Desired Outcomes
Where do you want your business to be? This step involves mapping the goals and objectives of your business model.
This step helps you to identify the gaps between what is currently happening and the desired result.
It's important to keep things simple at this stage and avoid overcomplicating things. There are so many variables to consider in continuous improvement that every organization has a unique approach.
3. Chart Your Improvement Journey
You can now begin mapping your journey to improvement. This stage describes specific actions to address those gaps and to help create a culture that will enable sustained improvements.
It's time to focus on the details. For example, you can establish KPIs which will tell you, among other things, how much improvement you've made and how well continuous improvement was implemented.
Define responsibilities and create a timeline.
4. Test, Scale, Implement, And Adjust
Step one will differ depending on your organization, but generally follows these guidelines: Engage employees from across your entire company in developing your plan to implement.
All parties involved, from senior managers and frontline employees alike, must understand the best practices, standards and procedures necessary for continuous improvement.
Managers must possess the ability to oversee complex processes as well as navigate change effectively.
Senior leaders must commit and involve themselves fully to accomplish continuous improvement successfully, playing an essential role in scaling, maintaining, and adjusting continuous improvement efforts.
We now move onto our next section highlighting key success factors for planning and sticking with continuous improvement plans.
Theory sounds good, but what exactly does that entail in practice? For simplicity's sake we outlined our plan in four steps to keep things manageable but they may change and adapt depending on each organization.
Let's examine an actual implementation using Coyote Logistics as an example.
After conducting an assessment of their current state, a company realized that food shippers were spending $98 000 more due to poor scheduling and communication practices.
Their goal was to lower costs while improving communication, performance and efficiency - with cost cutting the focus for improved efficiency being of primary concern.
They first devised their strategy, inviting key stakeholders to contribute ideas and solutions as well as noting any benefits or obstacles encountered along the way.
Once underway, they tracked and analyzed their project on an ongoing basis, tracking actions taken as well as results obtained.
Over one year, this company saved $85,000 through reduced expenditures by 84.81% and improved communication through eliminating unnecessary emails.
They celebrated and shared these results with employees as they recognized individuals and teams that helped move things in a positive direction.
Seven Ways To Improve Continuous Improvement
Even if a process is designed to be improved, there's always room for improvement. You can improve your efforts to achieve continuous improvement by following these tips:
1. Create Feedback Loops
To encourage continuous improvement, it is best to create a culture which supports this. Encourage employee participation by receiving and giving feedback.
When employees offer suggestions, listen to them and provide them with the resources necessary to implement their ideas. This can also be a great way to engage your employees.
2. Focus On The Customer
Continuous improvement is about creating a better service or product for your customers. It's therefore important to consider your customers when making changes.
3. Set Smart Goals
You can benchmark your progress with SMART goals and determine if you are making the improvements that you desire.
4. Be Flexible
Do not be afraid to alter your plans when you discover a better method of doing something. Continuous improvement relies on flexibility when it comes to how we handle work and change.
5. You Must Be Willing To Make Mistakes
Not all feedback will be what you want. Be open to all feedback.
Glenn Rogers is the CEO of Float and tells his staff to "seek continuous improvement" by accepting feedback, rather than defending it.
You can only improve yourself by educating yourself, asking for advice, and being willing to be wrong.
6. Plan Your Communication
Make sure that everyone knows your plans and how they can assist. Communication will keep everyone on the same page, and help you improve your processes.
7. Celebrate Your Success
Celebrate your success when you achieve an improvement. This will motivate your team and show that they are appreciated.
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Get Started On Your Journey To Continuous Improvement
Any organization can benefit from continuous improvement. Using it, you can achieve small, incremental results that will add up over time.
Start small. Do not try to tackle too many things at once. Make one or two small changes, focusing on a single area. Don't strive for perfection, but rather to improve your process.
You can always improve your process, so don't aim for perfection.
If you don't know where to begin, Cyber Infrastructure is a good place to start. Gathering the right support system to get you there is the first step in creating improvement opportunities.
A coach can provide personalized support for your employees to create a value-stream that works.
