This article aims to demystify continuous improvement processes. What they are, what they aren’t and how you can use them effectively.
What they are
A continuous improvement process is simply a series of steps that help you to improve an existing process within your business (another series of steps!). A continuous improvement process is usually a fixed approach, whereas your business process could be different every time.
A good improvement process will have a start, a middle and an end.
What they aren’t
These continuous improvement processes, however, are not a shortcut. They aren’t magic and they aren’t a recipe for success!
PDCA – the original continuous improvement process
PDCA stands for Plan, Do, Check and Act. It fits the requirement above to have a start, middle and end. Let’s walk through the stages.
Plan. Too many businesses skimp on this step. This is our start and questions such as ‘where are you right now?’ and ‘where do you want to get to?’ are great ones to ask. Coming up with an improvement plan to get you from where you are to where you want to be is the point of this step.
Do. Take action, work the plan and put in effort to move your business along the improvement journey.
Check. Many businesses skip this step altogether. If they don’t like their results, they throw the improvement away. What a waste! However, if you review your improvement and it isn’t working, this is just information. You have the opportunity to review what’s happened and evaluate what’s working and what isn’t.
Act. With your Check evaluation complete, how do you want to change your approach? Stay on course? Tweak the plan? If you have made good progress, you may want to park the improvement and focus on another area. If you want to carry on with this particular improvement, you can review your Plan and go through the loop again. After all, it is called continuous improvement for a reason!
Add in strategies
To help with your planning you may want to consider various tools, techniques and strategies. These can include:
- Kaizen
- Pareto analysis (aka 80/20)
- Checklists
- SPC / Six Sigma
- Lean tools / waste reduction
- Digitisation
By using these tools, the shape of your Plan can change. Unfortunately, running through each of the above is outside the scope of this article. But, the point is that you can change the shape of your continuous improvement process, so it will always provide you with fresh ideas and approaches to improve the results of your business.
Master the basics
If continuous improvement is new to you, then I recommend you master PDCA first. As I said earlier, too many businesses skip over the steps. Frustration takes over and great improvement opportunities are left untapped.
A sensible plan, a tiny steps approach to undertaking the plan, periodic checking and minor tweaking to your plan is a great strategy for any business.
Continuous improvement processes are designed to help us do what we do even better. I hope that you adopt one that works well for you. A small variation on the above, that fits how you and your business works, could be amazing!
