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

Historical View

Short Introduction of the History to give a little bit more context, also to clarify the different terms Kaizen and CI

Tools

Tools that are connected to the concept of continuous improvement Root Cause Analysis 5 Why maybe 8D Problem Solving ...

Continous Improvement in Relation to APPPM

Continuous Improvement as an integrated management approach, lessons lernead from projects, capturing of knowledge in the organizational knowledge base, focusing on APPPM in this chapter as the concept itself is explained in a more general view

Application

Workshops

Tasks Forces for Continous Improvement / Teams

Where is it mainly used / Limitation in terms of industry or company size

Limitations

What is necessary in an organization to achieve continuous improvement

Where are the obstacles

Commitment of management

Failure culture