Continuous improvement: what is it and how to do it?

"Nothing is so good that cannot improve", "for every step you climb there is a new one right above", "you have to kill one lion a day"! Surely you have heard one of these phrases, after all, the world is constantly changing, making the concept of continuous improvement a must in our lives.

Companies are always looking for greater results, competition for a job is increasing every day, among countless other cases that I could cite that if you do not improve continuously, you are behind!

Because of this, much has been talked about continuous improvement, and I will explain in this article the definition of this concept, how to do it, and a real example of how continuous improvement can leverage results! Let&rsquos go?

What is continuous improvement?

Continuous improvement is the practice adopted by several companies aiming to make their results better, more efficient and effective. The goal is to always improve their products, processes or services. It is an endless cyclical process, after all, there are always new opportunities for improvement to be identified and put into practice.

This philosophy has become increasingly popular, being something intrinsic to any large company nowadays. This is due to the fact that capitalism is increasingly "wild", and it is necessary to generate a lot of value for the client with the least possible expense.

Basic Factors of Continuous Improvement

Like all philosophy, this also has basic factors that you need to understand before you apply it. Shall we go to them?

• It requires continuity: as we have already said, continuous improvement is an endless cyclical process. You improve, analyze, and study improvement points to start another plan of action!
  
• It's a culture: it's not just about improving processes, it's about changing the whole way of thinking of the company. It is a business philosophy, that is, it must be inserted at all levels of the company, from the top management to the workers on the shop floor.
  
• Benefits for all: Change should bring overall benefits, involving all areas, not just a specific one. All the processes of the company must be encompassed, as well as the lives of all responsible employees.
  

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How to apply continuous improvement?

If you want to apply this philosophy in your company, or even in your personal life, you need to be aware of some principles that will help you achieve the desired results. They are ...

Focus

It is important to establish focal points when applying continuous improvement in your company, after all when studying improvement points, you will find countless activities that can be improved.

You need to focus on the ones that can produce the most results, because if you get carried away with the will to improve everything at the same time, you will not be able to make any improvements, wasting time and effort in vain.

Measuring

Quality is a concept that depends a lot on the point of view to be adopted. In our ISO 9001: 2015 course we talk about this, after all, for someone who uses a lot of ground road, a pickup truck has a lot more quality than a BMW, which is a lower car, right?

But what does this have to do with measurement? It's simple. To measure something, it is necessary to evaluate what we are looking for. If you do not know what quality is for you, how can you define indicators to analyze it?

Taking advantage of what we said about the car, we&rsquoll define quality as the number of defective cars produced in a factory. If I measure and see that I produce 10 defective cars for every 10000 that are produced, I can think of a continuous improvement project to reduce that number to 7.5 until I get the best result possible.

Do you realize that for this I had to define what quality is for me, to establish indicators, and to make the measurement? That&rsquos why "Measurement" is so important in Continuous Improvement!

Standardization

"There is no improvement if there is no standard"

(Taiichi Ohno)

This forerunner of Lean Manufacturing knew what he was talking about. If you do not have a pattern, it is impossible to control the processes. Let's illustrate.

Let&rsquos suppose that in a process you make a part in a certain way. The next day, you change the way you manufacture and get a better result. However, as you try to improve once again, you end up making your results worse.

Do you agree with me that if you don&rsquot set a standard, you won&rsquot know which processes have changed on the day you've improved and on the day that it got worse? Standardization is key for this! Based on your standard, it is possible to establish improvements that must be added to the standard so that its benefits will be maintained during the new processes!

Have technical knowledge

It is no use focusing on a problem, measuring its performance and thinking about standardization if you do not know what should be done. If the goal is to decrease the number of defective cars produced, it just has not been achieved yet because you still do not have the knowledge to do so.

Today there are numerous techniques that can help you define what should be done, among them, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma, Quality Tools and PDCA.

The first two are the most complete and famous techniques in the world! Any great company that you can think of already uses both methodologies for continuous improvement. So if you want to know more, just click on the links above.

The quality tools are also amazing to come up with action plans, and much simpler to use. They help identify the cause of the problem and propose quick and efficient solutions.

Last but not least, we have the PDCA! We can say that PDCA is the very concept of continuous improvement, because its 4 steps, Plan, Do, Check and Act comprise the improvement cycle, which must run continuously within a company.

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