Definition - CI Basics

Continuous Improvement can be defined as the process your company or organization develops, to address the ever changing dynamics affecting the development and deployment of your product and/or service. Some will point out that programs such as RCM, Lean/Six Sigma, Kaizen, etc., are essentially continuous improvement processes. An argument can be made that those processes are actually tools within larger, more comprehensive continuous improvement process models.

A Continuous Improvement model needs a champion/leader and should begin with agreed upon measurable business parameters. Things like quality, cost, downtime, and waste are the most obvious. Other areas to consider are safety, customer complaints (internal and external), and moral. These areas will then have thresholds (trigger points) that initiate action when reached. Some organizations choose or require many detailed trigger points. Others choose an 80/20 approach because achieving Six Sigma (3.4 defects per million) is not cost justifiable or required. A good approach could be a mix that accepts more variation with product quality or waste, then say with safety or customer complaints. An example of this would be the combining of Lean principles with Six Sigma principles. We discovered that these two programs were not as effective when they were mutually exclusive.

Utilize your leadership team, and if you don't have one... create one. Be sure to spend quality time and include all segments of your business or organization when developing an overall strategy. Develop your supporting infrastructure and be sure it can be realistically supported. It is one thing to say that certain data will be measured, when in fact those data collection systems are missing or deficient. Decide who will be on your improvement teams. Make them cross-functional and be sure you can support the availability of those personnel. Avoid the "Technology Solutions" trap. Many initial improvements are often surprisingly simple, especially those that are procedural in nature. You can also expect that upwards of 50% of your initial successs will not be maintenance related. The magic is not the technology. It is having the right group of people, using effective diagnostic tools, applied against pertinent empirical data. The failures of programs like Lean/Six Sigma, RCM, Kaizen, etc. is often not due to those programs themselves, but rather to a lack of overall vision or the lack of supporting infrastructure. Simply stated, don't bite off more than you need or can swallow.

Be sure to include steps in your model that support implementation and sustainment of your improvements. It is often discovered that finding the solution was the easy part. Making the step-change and gaining buy-in is not achieved and sustained as management dictates, or engineered solutions alone. People in the trenches (supervisors, operators, and technicians) must believe in the solution, be able to support it, and accept accountability as their role requires.

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transformation mechanism requiring continuous process improvement and innovation. These results can have a physical component, such as a tangible product, as well as an informational or knowledge-based one, such as a report, book, or expertise provided. Regardless of the nature of the delivered result, an emphasis on service and customer satisfaction is the objective of most 21st century organizations.
the context and infrastructure you develop to support any . This is accomplished by setting "acceptable boundaries" more narrowly and then odifying the production process until the new quality goal is met. This, of course, may require substantial changes to the process or the raw materials used. In Deming's conceptualization of the process, quality is thus "designed in" rather than "inspected out." The concept of "continuous improvement" arose in such efforts to raise quality. Its downstream consequences are lower cost in production and in warranty service, advantages in pricing, and higher customer satisfaction leading to brand loyalty and market share.

Overview
At the same time that businesses are serving customers and their evolving needs, they should be measuring their performance using appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) evaluated against the requirements of customers. Therefore, organizations should view their resources as a set of assets that can change and adapt to the needs of their customers and use their resources to manage their customers’ expectations in order to remain a viable operation, i.e., having a sustainable reason for their existence.

Continuous Improvement Process (CIP, or CI) is an ongoing effort to improve products, services or processes. These efforts can seek "incremental" improvement over time or "breakthrough" improvement all at once.[1] Delivery (customer valued) processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility.
Some see it as a meta-process for most management systems (Business Process Management, Quality Management, Project Management). Deming saw it as part of the 'system' whereby feedback from the process and customer were evaluated against organisational goals. The fact that it can be called a management process does not mean that it needs to be executed by 'management' merely that it makes decisions about the implementation of the delivery process and the design of the delivery process itself.
Some successful implementations use the approach known as Kaizen (the translation of kai (“change”) zen (“good”) is “improvement”). This method became famous by the book of Masaaki Imai “Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success.”
? The core principle of CIP is the (self) reflection of processes. (Feedback)
? The purpose of CIP is the identification, reduction, and elimination of suboptimal processes. (Efficiency)
? The emphasis of CIP is on incremental, continuous steps rather than giant leaps. (Evolution)