Continuous improvement

What is continuous improvement?

Continuous improvement is the long-term approach used to improve products, services, and processes within an organisation. The aim of continuous improvement is to increase efficiency and quality, whilst reducing costs.

Making changes within an organisation can often be tricky, especially if the change you’re making is major. With continuous improvement, these improvements are done gradually. By making small steps over time, there will be less resistance to change across the whole organisation. Continuous improvement is about shifting the mindset of your organisation, rather than adding a process that people working in your organisation need to learn.

What are the six steps in continuous improvement?

Continuous improvement requires an ongoing effort to improve the products, services, and processes within your organisation. It's primarily made up of six key stages which are listed below.

1. Identify the opportunity:
   Select the challenge or problem that you wish to be improved within your organisation and evaluate its current process
2. Analyse:
   When you've identified an opportunity, analyse the root cause of the problem.
3. Action:
   Plan and implement actions that will help correct the cause of the problem
4. Study the results:
   Outline and confirm the actions that have been taken to achieve your objective and study the results
5. Performance:
   Ensure that the performance is maintained and document it. Continuously monitor the performance as it will help you to identify any problem areas within the process
6. Future planning:
   After considering the performance, plan out what needs to be done to mitigate any problems. Look at your team to see how effectively they are performing and set some targets for future improvement.

Benefits of continuous improvement?

Continuous improvement allows organisations to make small, positive changes over time, but it’s not just the timing that is a major benefit. Here are some of the benefits you’ll see in your organisation by adopting this approach:

• A better understanding of change:
  Encouraging everyone in your organisation, from smaller teams to larger teams, will help them cooperate with any new changes
• Improvement in employee involvement in work:
  Ensuring everyone is involved in the changes will help employees to feel ‘part of the team’ and allows them to actively contribute
• Correct problems in the workplace:
  As changes are done gradually, it’s easier to spot any problems and correct them along the way
• High productivity:
  As you’ll be improving processes gradually, you’ll start seeing more efficiency in production
• Increased innovation:
  Changes often bring about new ideas and with the whole organisation on board, you’ll get to hear input from wider teams
• Increased brand reputation:
  An increased morale across the organisation, will maintain motivation. Not just internally, but externally too.

Challenges of continuous improvement

Continuous improvement is about adopting a new mindset, rather than learning a new process. There can be many challenges that your organisation can face when implementing continuous improvement.

• Rapid market changes:
  Keeping up with evolving markets can be tricky, so identifying new developments that could boost your productivity will mean you’ll have to act quickly.
• Monitoring results:
  Tracking your data from old data to new can be difficult if you don’t have efficient tracking in place
• New leadership:
  If there any internal staff changes, it could mean their views are not aligned with the new ideas in place.