Continuous Improvement or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Kaizan (apologies to S. Kubric)
Over the years, I have gotten to know people in different industries and organizations. While many people love the work they do and find it rewarding (at least financially) almost everyone has some complaint about how their organization does this or that. My acquaintances are sure they have a better way to do things. My ears always perk up when I hear this. I have learned that it is nearly universal and found that most people have no idea how create change in their environments. Generally, there is no mechanism in their businesses for this aside from a rarely used suggestion system or email to the boss.
What this suggests to me is that American industry (and this includes service concerns) does a poor job of institutionalizing continuous improvement in their business models. I have worked in high tech throughout my career, and learned early on that failure to improve, change, and adapt is a sure ticket to being an evolutionary dead end in a hurry. I believe that to stand still is to eventually fail. So, it is puzzling to me to hear that business owners and managers are resistant to making changes that may help ensure ongoing success for them and the people who work for them.
So, what exactly do I mean by continuous improvement? Well, a lot of times in the stories I hear people are dealing with little inefficiencies or barriers that make their lives harder (sometimes it’s just about the bad coffee in the break room, but that’s kind of another problem…). These issues would likely benefit from changes but, if even if addressed, wouldn’t translate to a culture of making things better as a way of life.
To make that transition, it would help to have a definition of Continuous Improvement (CI). I define continuous improvement as a systematic, focused effort to understand, evaluate and improve processes and practices with the end result of improving customer satisfaction, reducing waste, improving productivity, and driving higher profits.
In other words, it’s about creating a culture of dissatisfaction with the status quo that translates into action which drives ongoing, rational change. Now, the first thought you might have is “Chaos!”, or perhaps “Anarchy!” or maybe “My budget!”. I am first in line to agree that not all change is good nor that change for the sake of change is desirable. But what if we can find a thoughtful, systematic process for evaluating how we do business and identifying areas for improvement? How about if we have proven tools for generating creative, effective actions? Then an environment of dissatisfaction and improvement becomes energizing and profitable while maintaining a steady ship.
Go to any web job site and look for “Organizational Development” or “Operations Manager” and you are likely to see the following words tossed about: “Lean Manufacturing”, “Six Sigma” or perhaps “Kaizen Processes”. Each of these are continuous improvement philosophies that have distinct characteristics. I will say that Kaizen is often deeply ingrained in Lean activities, but that’s for later. If you ask a half dozen CI people what they think about these, you are likely to get a half a dozen impassioned speeches about which is the best way to approach doing continuous improvement. Some might say that Lean Manufacturing (I prefer to call it Lean Operations and will call it that from now on) is a stand-alone philosophy straight out of Toyota and must be performed just as Taiichi Ohno said it must be done. Another might say, it’s all about the data and Six Sigma is the only approach that makes sense. Another might go on about the value of empowered work teams and the impact of diverse thinking in tackling all the problems in the business.
As with most things, the truth is somewhere in between. So how do you go about deciding what to do if you want to explore continuous improvement as a way of life in your organization? Let’s describe these common improvement strategies. Each is quite a bit more detailed than I am going to in to here, but I think it is enough to give you a sense of what each tries to achieve.
Lean Manufacturing (Operations) is the result of work done in the Toyota automobile manufacturing plants in Japan. There are many good books about this and it is well documented and dissected. For our purposes, it is enough to say that Lean is about the reduction of waste. Waste comes in many forms in business. It can be in lost time, duplication of effort, poor customer satisfactions, rework, scrap, etc. Success is defined by customer satisfaction (and her willingness to give you money for your goods and services).
The classic definition of Lean has 5 basic principles:
Value: what the customer sees as important or valuable to them
Value stream: those process that come together to create the product or service
Flow: maintaining steady, uninterrupted movement of material or action within the process
Pull: organization of work so that only the material (or actions) required are on hand just at the right time
Perfection: the elimination of mistakes in the process
People often think Lean is all about doing more work with fewer resources. This is NOT the specific target of the philosophy. What does happen, however, is as processes become more efficient and effective, fewer resources are often required to perform them. It isn’t, however, the fundamental goal of the methodology to reduce headcount. Simply having fewer employees working harder is not Lean Operations.
Six Sigma is an approach that is based on data and statistical methods to identify poor quality in work processes. It can be applied equally well in both manufacturing and service businesses. The primary target of the tool set is to eliminate variability and errors. To effectively use Six Sigma one must have access to good data about the work being done. Appropriate statistical and other tools are applied to identify sources of variation and errors then systematically eliminate them. Central to Six Sigma is the DMAIC process.
DMAIC is defined as:
Define: identify what process needs to be improved and the objectives of the improvement effort
Measure: identify and measure the attributes of the process critical to the quality of the output
Analyze: collect data and using statistical and other tools, identify the root causes of variation or errors
Improve: create new or improved actions to eliminate these causes (mistake proofing)
Control: collect data and create systems to monitor processes and stop problems before they occur
One might think this is applicable only in high tech or complex manufacturing environments, but that would be an error. There are few actions taken that don’t add up to a process that can be measured, studied and improved.
Kaizen is an approach where teams of people get together and attack a process to identify where improvements can be applied. My own experience with Natural Work Groups shows this to be an effective way to involve the people who do the work in the improvement process. Kaizen has its roots in Lean Operations. When a part of the process (or factory) is targeted for improvement using the Lean principles, teams of skilled individuals are pulled together to do the improvement work. This can be very effective, often showing results quickly at low cost (usually). I would consider Kaizen to be the typical expression of continuous improvement in most workplaces.
So, what to make of all this? If you want to start continuous improvement in your organization, how do you decipher all this talk of different approaches?
Some folks see these as distinctly different approaches that are mutually exclusive. My stand is that each brings excellent tools to the party and a choice between them is not necessary. If you do some reading on implementation of these practices you will likely see that it takes a great deal of expertise and training to enable your organization to understand the thinking and make it work. I have seen this activity in action and it is true that one can spend a lot of money and time to get an organization on board.
However, to get started in CI, it is not critical that you take on an obligation to that scale. What is necessary is that the management team be committed to embracing continuous improvement as a way of life. This is another big topic I’ll address at a later time. Just know that without a deep seated will to make change a part of doing business, it is destined to fail.
I hope this little tutorial on CI helped to create some understanding of this vital practice. The main point to take away is that it doesn’t have to be a rudderless activity and there are well documented and proven methodologies than can help you take your organization to the next level of excellence.
Make it happen.
*This is a riff on the classic movie “Dr. Strangeglove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. If you haven’t seen it, I do recommend it as bit of classic American cinema from the mid-20th century. It’s weird, so don’t say I didn’t warn you! M.
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