Continuous Improvement / Kaizen

Abstract

Continuous Improvement, also referred to as Kaizen, is a concept that is related to principles, methods and activities that have the target of continuously improving the performance of an organization or individual. Continuous Improvement focuses on incremental steps that eventually lead to big improvements over time, rather than breakthrough changes. The concept is best depicted by the phrase “a long journey begins with a small step”. In a wider and more cultural sense, the concept is based on the assumption that the world is steadily changing and can always be improved. The concept of Kaizen is Japanese and means kai = change, zen = to improve. Although there are slight definitional differences, continuous improvement and kaizen are fundamentally similar. Hence the two terms are generally used synonymously [1]. In an organizational context, Continuous improvement is a strategic and long-term effort to enhance competitiveness by improving quality, cost and time. The effort usually is directed at achieving certain objectives and is therefore different to the concept of idea management, that revolves around collecting, implementing and rewarding ideas of employees [2]. Improvement is achieved by applying an iterative process of constantly observing the current situation and implementing improvements. Improvements should then be standardized and disseminated to other areas. Furthermore, Continuous Improvement tries to involve employees from all hierarchy levels of an organization in the improvement process. Therefore, it is a popular concept in industry as it is easy and cheap to implement and not limited to any industry and organizational size [1]. The concept of Continuous Improvement is illustrated in figure 1.

Historical of Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement first appeared in Japan during the second world war. It was an answer to the numerous and serious damages that the country had suffered. The concept was used by authorities in order to reconstruct the country. Furthermore, the development of continuous improvement was supported by the use of the U.S. training program Training with Industry (TWI Inc.), which aimed at developing training programs for Japanese companies. The small-step approach was preferred, as resources were scarce and major change initiatives could not be afforded. Even though elements of continuous improvement such as suggestion systems or quality systems were regularly used in Japanese industry, the concept only got further attention with the development of the oil crisis in 1973. In a period of financial constraints, companies such as Toyota have used the concept to achieve cost reductions with little expenditure of resources. Parallel the company Canon was able to gain large benefits of up to 200 million US Dollar by launching a continuous improvement campaign. As the profits did not go unnoticed, continuous improvement made its way into the western economy in the 1980s. Remarkable benefits could be achieved by companies such as Xerox, Motorola, Harley Davidson, and General Electrics [1].

Continuous Improvement in Relation to Project, Program and Portfolio Management

Continuous Improvement was originally created to improve production processes and is today commonly used in that area. And even though Continuous Improvement focuses on the constant challenge to improve standards [1], it is applicable in any organizational area including project, program and portfolio management. Although projects are always unique to some degree, different projects in an organization often involve recurring activities, methods and processes that can be constantly improved. Furthermore, projects can be embedded in organizational processes that structure the frame within projects are being carried out. Continuous Improvement needs to be seen as a learning effect that is achieved project by project and can be transferred into the organizational knowledge base. The project management standard ISO21500 recommends that Continuous Improvement, as one of several underlying concepts, should influence thinking and behavior in the governance and management of projects. Furthermore, knowledge gained must be documented and shared throughout the organization, also to increase performance in future projects [4].

Key Concepts

The idea of Continuous Improvement is part of the bigger concept of Lean Management, which has its origins in the Toyota production System. The term Lean is described by Krafcik (1988) as a (manufacturing) process that uses less of everything in comparison with mass production including human effort, space, tool investment and engineering to develop a new product in less time. Another definition is done by Krajewski, who describes lean systems as systems that maximize the added value of each activity in an organization, by eliminating waste and delays. Continuous Improvement is thus aiming at incrementally improving organizational activities by using less of everything or reducing waste and delays. A key idea 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 [7].

The successful implementation of Continuous Improvement provides numerous benefits. Some benefits are named in the following listing:

- Quality Improvements: Quality issues are a focus of Continuous Improvement. Deviations in quality are analyzed in detail to prevent errors from recurring.

- Increased Productivity/Less Waste: Continuous Improvement fosters the efficient use of available resources, resulting in less need of resources for a given output.

- Employee skills improve: Continuous Improvement is not only aimed at improving standards and processes, but also human resources. Especially, since Continuous Improvement seeks to involve employees in various activities, they are continuously educated. Raising awareness of potential improvements, making employees understand their work better.

- Fostering a holistic view: Problems are often tackled in interdisciplinary work groups, thus assuring that different perspectives and interests are met.

- Customer Satisfaction increases: Improvement can be translated into customer satisfaction. For instance, quality improvement, end of project is reached faster, cost reduction.

- Higher motivation of employees/Increased participation: Through Continuous Improvement employees have the chance to actively contribute to organizational improvement. Seeing their ideas having an impact, can be factor for employee motivation. Furthermore, Continuous Improvement involves all employees meaning that combined organizational knowledge can be used.

- Increased employee self-esteem: Continuous Improvement can create a learning environment for all employees. As professional self-esteem depends on knowledge and experience, it grows as improvements continue over time.

- Higher Responsibility of employees: As problems are solved in multidisciplinary teams, all participating employees (from all hierarchy levels) are responsible for a certain task.

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

Bibliography

Trabasso, L. G., & Pessoa, M. V. (2016). Continuous Improvement. In Lean Product Design and Development Journey (S. 89-104). Springer International Publishing.

Muralidharan, K. (2015). Continuous Improvement. In Six Sigma for Organizational Excellence (pp. 517-532). Springer India.