Continuous Process

Improvement
By A.sainath
 Definition of Process
Process refers to business and production
activities of an organisation.

The process is the interaction of some

combination of people, material,
equipment, method, measurement, and
the environment to produce an out come
such as product or service.
 Process improvement

Understanding existing processes and

introducing process changes to improve product
quality, reduce costs or accelerate schedules.

Most process improvement work so far has

focused on defect reduction. This reflects the
increasing attention paid by industry to quality.

However, other process attributes can also be

the focus of improvement
Process attributes
 5 Golden ways to improve
1. Reduce resources
2. Reduce errors
3. Meet or exceed expectations of
downstream customers
4.Make the process safer
5.Make the process more satisfying to the
person doing it.
The process improvement
cycle
Measure

Change Analyse
Process improvement stages
Process measurement
 Attributes of the current process are
measured. These are a baseline for
assessing improvements.
Process analysis
 The current process is assessed and
bottlenecks and weaknesses are identified.
Process change
 Changes to the process that have been
identified during the analysis are
introduced.
 Improvement Strategies
Repair

Refinement

Renovation

Reinvention
 Repair
This strategy is simple – anything broken
must be fixed so that it function as
designed.

It is important to note that the repair

strategy does not make the process better
than the original design
 Refinement
This strategy involves activities that
continually improve a process that is not
broken
Improvements to processes, products, and
services are accomplished on an
incremental basis
Refinement improves efficiency and
effectiveness
 Renovation
This strategy results in major breakthrough
improvements.
Innovation and technological
advancements are the key factors in this
approach.
Renovation is more costly than the
previous strategies and is usually
undertaken by teams rather than
individuals
 Reinvention
Reinvention is like a clean sheet of paper

Reinvention is preceded by the feeling that

the current approach will never satisfy
customer requirements

Reinvention might also be desirable to

maintain organisation vitality or advantage.
 Plan what is needed
Do it
Check that it works
Act to correct any problems
or
improve performance
PDCA stands for Plan, Do, Check, Act, and is the
basic principle for continuous improvement.
Planning means understanding what you are
trying to achieve, understanding how things work,
focusing in on the problem, finding root causes
and creative solutions and planning their careful
implementation.
Doing is not always as easy as it might seem. It
may include training of people and other project
management activities, but the biggest and
simplest traps are often last minute changes. The
problem with these is that if things go wrong, you
cannot backtrack to the decision that led to the
action and consequently have to start all over
again.
 Checking means checking the results and also
comparing them with what you were expecting. When
things go wrong and good results are not found, this is
the part where courage, honesty and integrity is
required to stick to the process. The key question when
things go wrong is ‘Why’. With a well documented
process you will be able to go back to the exact point
where an incorrect decision was made.
Acting means acting on what you found during the
‘check’ phase, which either means holding the gains
and standardizing the process (e.g. within an ISO9000
system) or acting to learn from the experience and start
again at the appropriate place.
PDCA is often called the Deming Cycle or Deming
Wheel, although Deming attributed it to his teacher,
Walter Shewart and called it the Shewart Cycle, which
properly is Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA), which
emphasizes the detailed approach during the Check
 Benefits of the PDCA cycle:

- Daily routine management-for the individual

and/or the team
- Problem-solving process
- Project management
- Continuous development
- Vendor development
- Human resources development
- New product development
- Process trials
 
 The Seven Point Action Plan

.
1 Management must agree on the meaning of the

quality programme, its implications and the direction

to take
2. Top management must accept and adopt the new
philosophy
3. Top management must communicate the plan and
the necessity for it to the people in the organisation
4.Every activity must be recognised as a step in a
process and the customers of that process identified.
The customers are responsible for the next stage of
the process
5. Each stage must adopt the Deming or
Shewhart Cycle - Plan, Do, Check, Action - as the
basis of quality improvement

6. Team working must be engendered and

encouraged to improve inputs and outputs.
Everyone must be enabled to contribute to this
process

7. Construct an organisation for quality with the

support of knowledgeable statisticians