Continuous Improvement / Kaizen

Abstract

Continuous Improvement or Kaizen is a concept that is related to principles, methods and activities that have the target of continuously improving the performance of an organization. Continuous Improvement focuses on incremental steps that eventually lead to big improvements over time, rather than breakthrough changes. This incremental change is achieved by constantly reflecting and reexamining done work. The concept can also be seen as a continuous effort or general way of thinking. Continuous Improvement is similar to Kaizen, hence the two terms are generally used synonymously.

A key concept of continuous Improvement can be found in the PDCA Cycle, that was designed by William Edwards Deming in the 1930s. The Cycle describes an iterative process of continuous learning. It consists of the four Phases Plan, Do, Check, Act.

Plan: The planning phase consists of the two major steps observation of the situation and proposing a hypothesis why the targeted situation can not be reached. Here, causes that prevent the desired situation from being reached need to be identified, e. g. with a Ishikawa Diagram or 5-Why Analysis. The first step also focuses on clarifying the desired future situation besides observing the current state.

Do: The Do phase revolves around the development and testing of countermeasures for the identified root causes.

Check: In this phase the data obtained by performing the countermeasure is analyzed. The result of this analysis should be the acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis. Gained insights should be documented.

Act: This step contains the actual implementation of the countermeasure. Countermeasures should now be standardized and monitored. A reflection about leasons learned is recommended. If the hypothesis test failed, a new one needs to be proposed.

Benefits and Key ideas

Tools

Root Cause Analysis 5 Why ...

Continous Improvement in Relation to Project Management

Continuous Improvement as an integrated management approach, lessons lernead from projects, capturing of knowledge in the organizational knowledge base, is there a difference of to normal organizations

Application

Workshops Where is it mainly used

Limitations

Failure culture is necessary