Continuous Improvement

Continuing Education for Technical Professionals

Professional Development Tips

Volume 2, Issue 2

January 25, 2003

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

by Gary C. Hinkle - President, Auxilium, Inc.

Many organizations have implemented formal continuous improvement programs, often as part of an ISO or other quality program. Unfortunately, many organizations fall short of making continuous improvement part of the their culture and establishing a highly effective continuous improvement program. There are many reasons why an organization may not be effective at continuously improving, including:

- Little or no understanding of what improvements would really benefit the organization

- Inadequate systems for measuring improvements

- Unclear goals, making it difficult to define improvements

- Poor leadership

- Short-term management agenda

- No incentive

An effective continuous improvement program must at least have clear goals and a system for measuring improvements. To ensure that improvements don’t come by sacrificing performance in other areas, a continuous improvement program must cover a broad range of functions and processes. Generally, in order to achieve this the top management in the organization must support the effort and set high-level goals for improvements. Sometimes this may not be accomplished easily, so under these circumstances individuals and teams who are trying to accomplish improvements should do their best to understand any implications of their efforts.

For example, a marketing group may successfully reduce overall advertising expenses but may not sufficiently budget for new product launches because they don't have sufficient knowledge of all the new product development programs. Another example is a manufacturing group may reduce costs associated with supporting existing products but the engineering costs may increase due to additional sustaining support required. These examples illustrate why cross-functional management and support of continuous improvement efforts are essential.

Consider the following characteristics of an effective continuous program:

- Clear goals and support from top management

- Cross-functional visibility and participation

- A culture that strives for actual improvements, not just words in a quality manual

- Benchmarks for establishing goals

- Metrics for monitoring performance

- Balance of short-term and long-term goals

- Continuous improvement of continuous improvement programs

- Multiple aspects of improvement efforts (financial, customer and employee satisfaction, productivity, etc.)

Every member of an organization must do their part to continuously improve. Whatever your role is in the organization, make it a priority to ensure that there are clear improvement goals and adequate systems to measure progress in the areas that affect your work product.

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