Concept of Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is based on a Japanese Concept called Kaizen, is the philosophy of

continually seeking ways to improve operations. It invloves identifying benchmarks of excellent
practices and instilling a sense of employee ownership of the process. The focus can be on:

 Reducing the length of time required to process requests for loans in bank
 The amount of scrap generated at a milling machine or the number of employee injuries.
 Continuous improvement can also focus on problems with customers or suppliers, such as
customers who request frequent changes in shipping quantities and suppliers that to
maintain high quality.

The bases of the continuous improvement philosophy are the beliefs that virtually any aspect of an
operation can be improved and that the people most closely associated with an operation are in the
best position to identify the changes that should be made. Consequently, employee involvement
plays a big role in continuous improvement programs.

Getting Started with Continuous Improvement

Instilling a philosophy of continuous improvement in an organization may be a lengthy process, and

several steps are essential to its eventual success.

1. Train employees in the methods of statistical process control (SPC) and other tools for
improvement quality.
2. Make SPC methods a normal aspect of daily operations.
3. Build work teams and employee involvement.
4. Utilize problem-solving techniques within work teams.
5. Develop a sense of operator ownership of the process.

Here employee involvement is central to the philosophy of continuous improvement. However, the
last two steps are crucial if the philosophy is to be the part of everyday operations. A sense of
operator ownership emerges when employees feel as if they own the processes and methods they
use and take pride in the quality of product or service 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.
 Continuous Process Improvement and Juran's Trilogy

CONTINUOUS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT (CPI)

CPI- is an endless occurrence throughout uninterrupted steady state of a series of procedures for the common
progression of the organization.

CPI- refers to an ongoing efforts to improve business processes.

CPI- is a formal activity, ongoing approach to improving business processes (ultimately productivity, products, and
services).

TQM on CPI – means a gradual and continuous improvement of processes. It consists of finding new opportunities
or improvements of processes, improving them, measuring improvement, and repeating the cycle again and again.

JURAN’S TRILOGY – consists of three managerial processes: planning, control, and improvement. With similar
analogy for better quality results, quality trilogy consists of the same managerial processes aimed at improving
quality of products and services. They are Quality Planning, Quality Control, and Quality Improvement.

1. Quality Planning- refers to the activities that establish the objectives and requirement for quality.

It comprised of following steps:

1. Determine who your customers are.

2. Discover your customers’ needs.

3. Develop a product whose features are align with the customers’ needs.

4. Develop a process whose features are capable of producing these products along with accompanying features.

5. Hands these plans off to the operations.

2. Quality Control- the operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfill the requirements for quality. It is
the inspection or appraisal of products and services to ensure that the stated requirements are fulfilled.

It comprised of following steps:

1. Evaluate the actual operating performance.

2. Compare actual performance to operating goals.

3. Take actions in response to differences.

3. Quality Improvement – aimed at attaining unprecedented levels of performance, which are significantly

better than the past level.

It comprised of following steps:

1. Establish the infrastructure needed to facilitate the continuous quality improvement.

2. Identifies the project improvement.

3. For each project, establish the team that is clearly in charge with the responsibility of bringing a

successful resolution to the project.

DEFINITION OF Juran’s Trilogy – managing for quality can be achieved by the use of the three
managerial processes; quality planning, quality control and, quality
improvement.

Three key methodologies of Juran’s Trilogy:

1. Planning Methodology – this methodology develops and puts in place the strategic and tactical that must be

achieved to attain operational, financial and, quality results.

2. Control Methodology – the second management methodology that utilize to prevent or correct unwanted or

unexpected change.

3. Improvement Methodology – the third methodology constructs a breakthrough system to create planned,

predictable and manage results. This is called Breakthrough.Breakthrough is a

deliberate change; a dynamic and decisive movement to unprecedented levels of

organizational performance than are presently active in the plan and maintained
by

current controls.

Summary:

The quality plan is being updated. The quality control stage is ongoing, so the quality control team continues to
maintain the process’s status quo, albeit a “new” status quo. Lastly, the firm utilizes a system of organizational
learning to capture the lessons that were learned during the improvement stage. Future planning teams will be
able to take advantage of this learning in the future to develop processes that contain less chronic waste to begin
with.

Hence, Quality planning is completed before the operations begin, quality control is helpful to keep the fire under
control namely the defects under control. The defects have emanated due to defects in quality planning. To reduce
the high level of defects, the organization initiates quality improvement which decreases the defect level. Juran’s
trilogy should be applied to improve quality intervals. Thus, it is useful for continuous improvement of quality.
Therefore an organization should initiate quality improvement efforts on a continuing basis and update the quality
planning. Thus, a quality plan is a living document.
 KAIZEN:
- Improvement without capital investment.

Formula:
Productivity improvement of 40%
+ Work In Progress (WIP) reduction of 10%
+ Machine set-up time reduction of 30%
+ Space reduction for manufacturing by 40
+ No additional capital investment
_________________________________________
= Improvement without capital investment / KAIZEN

- Is a Japanese word
- Means gradual, orderly and continuous improvement
- calls for never ending improvements. This means that improvement is not a one time activity, but a continuous
activity.

Two activities of Kaizen:

1. Maintenance – involves activities directed at maintaining current technological, managerial and operating
standards.
2. Improvement – aims at revising the current standards.

Three Basic Principles of Kaizen:

1. Work place effectiveness – the kaizen toolbox includes the 5S for improving workplace effectiveness.
2. Elimination of waste, strain and discrepancy - 3MUs in Japanese word; MUDA – waste, MURI- strain and
MURA- discrepancy.
3. Standardization – in terms of processes, materials and machinery.

Goals of Kaizen:
1. Kaizen is implemented not for profit but for quality.
2. The success of kaizen should be measurable through its impact on the customer satisfaction.
3. Kaizen will be successful only when it is process oriented.

Kaizen is a low cost approach to improvement, available to every organization that has the determination to improve
its process or delighting customers. Kaizen brings out improvements, which results in improved productivity,
efficiency, profitability and above all better quality of life of employees and satisfied customers.

Two ways for Kaizen Implementation:

1. Gradual Improvement of processes.
2. Kaizen Blitz – on the contrary, is a quick improvement methodology. A dramatic fashion of improvement
which usually completed in a single week. Its goal is simply to create better
production line.

5S Practices – also called 5S Tools

1. Sort – Seiri – separate all unnecessary thing and eliminate them.

2. Straighten – Seiton – arrange the essential things in order, so they can be easily accessed.
3. Scrub – Seiso – Keep machinery and working environment clean.
4. Systematize – Seiketsu – make cleaning and checking as routing practice.
5. Standardize – Shitsuke – standardize the four steps.

7 deadly wastes:
 1. Waste from overproduction – occurs due to production planning when money is blocked in the unsold products.
2. Waste of waiting time – Work- In- Progress is an example of waste of waiting time.
3. Transportation waste – Unnecessary waste.
4. Processing waste – If a process is held up due to breakdown of the machinery, money is los.
5. Inventory waste – every part should be accounted to avoid inventory waste.
6. Waste of motion – Searching for things, non availability of the correct tools, not monitoring the running
machine etc. can cause wastage of lot of time.
7. Production defects- the defective parts or supplies cause loss of money.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

- is undertaken essentially to results in a quantum jump in performance of processes.
- Synonymous with innovation because it is more than just automating or applying information Technology to the
existing process operations.
- The fundamental rethinking, and radical design of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement in critical,
contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality service and speed.
Fundamental Rethinking
- Dramatic improvements can take place through elimination of redundant operations, unnecessary operations, and
operations which add cost, but not value to the products and services.
Radical design- dramatics improvements cannot be achieved only through fundamental rethinking. It calls for
designof new process.

How to carry out Reengineering:

1. Planning
2. Process Study
3. Study of the best practices
4. Redesign
5. Implementation

BPR and TQM

The aim of BPR is to make dramatic improvement in quality. BPR is one of the tools to achieve TQM.
TQM and BPR are two parts of the same approach. Therefore, total quality is an objective, TQM is a means to
achieve it and BPR is an important tool within the TQM technology. This observation makes the relationship
between TQM and BPR crystal clear. While BPR is a tool, TQM is an umbrella concept involving many other
strategies.