Continuous Improvement techniques

1. CONTINUOUS
IMPROVEMENT
TECHNIQUES
Benjeer Usmani
19MBAK038

2. Introduction
◦ Continuous improvement technique are the methods or effort to improve products, services, or
processes.
◦ The major focus of these techniques is to ‘getting better all the time’
◦ The core principle of CIT is the (self) reflection of processes.
◦ The emphasis of CIT is on incremental, continual steps rather than giant leaps.
◦ The purpose of CIP is the identification, reduction, and elimination of suboptimal processes.

3. Techniques
The continuous improvement techniques are :
◦ Kanban
◦ A3s
◦ Kaizen
◦ The PCDA Cycle
◦ Gemba walks
◦ The 5 Whys
◦ Value Stream Mapping

4. Kanban
◦ Kanban is used to manage individual, team, or even organization-wide work. Although popularized by
software teams, Kanban can be applied to virtually any process that has distinct steps, and is
frequently used by marketing, sales, finance, and other disciplines.
◦ Kanban to help you visualize, manage, and optimize your workflows.
◦ Kanban is about evolution, not revolution.
◦ There are four big ideas in Kanban:
Visualize your process
Limit work in process
Focus on flow
Continuously improve

5. A3s
◦ A3s to provide vision and structure to big-picture improvements.
◦ A3 is a structured approach to problem solving used by Lean and Agile organizations. The term
A3 describes a type of oversized paper which is used to plan projects. The purpose of an A3 is
to:
Document the learning, decisions, and planning involved with solving a problem
Facilitate communication with people in other departments
Provide structure to problem-solving so as to maximize learning

6. Kaizen
◦ Kaizen is a business philosophy that focuses on gradually improving productivity by involving all
employees and by making the work environment more efficient.
◦ Kaizen translates to "change for the better" or "continuous improvement.”
◦ Key elements of kaizen are quality, effort, involvement of all employees, willingness to change,
and communication.
◦ The small changes used in kaizen can involve quality control, just-in-time delivery, standardized
work, the use of efficient equipment, and the elimination of waste.
◦ Changes can come from any employee anytime and don’t have to happen slowly, although
kaizen recognizes that small changes now can have big future impacts.

7. Plan – Do – Check – Act (PDCA) Cycle
◦ PDCA cycle supports continuous improvement and Kaizen. It provides a process for
improvement since the early design (planning) stage of any process, system, product or service.
This is used to systematically test hypotheses.
◦ Requires 4 basic steps-
◦ Plan: Identify an opportunity and plan for change.
◦ Do: Implement the change on a small scale.
◦ Check: Use data to analyze the results of the change and determine whether it made a
difference.
◦ Act: If the change was successful, implement it on a wider scale and continuously assess your
results. If the change did not work, begin the cycle again.

8. Gemba Walks
◦ Lean leaders recognize that the vast majority of the value generated in their organizations is by
the people with their hands on the product. The best ideas for improving their organizational
processes can only come from those employees. And leaders can only tap into that knowledge
by getting out of their offices and, to use another Japanese term, going to the gemba – the
place where things are really happening.
◦ Gemba walks are informal, casual opportunities for leaders to get a sense of what’s happening
in the organization.
◦ Gemba walks are therefore employed to keep leaders and front-line workers on the same page

9. The 5 Whys
◦ The 5 Whys to encourage inquisitive thinking and effective problem solving .
◦ The 5 Whys method is very simple in practice: Start with a problem statement, and then ask
“why” until the root cause is revealed.
◦ It is used in the Analyze phase of the Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve,
Control) methodology.
◦ The 5 Whys is a thinking tool for identifying the root causes of problems. Using the 5 Whys,
teams practicing continuous improvement are able to:
move past blame
think beyond the specific context of a problem
identify a proper, sustainable solution to resolve the issue

10. Value stream mapping
◦ Value stream mapping as a lean tool that employs a flowchart documenting every step in the
process. Many lean practitioners see
◦ VSM as a fundamental tool to identify waste, reduce process cycle times, and implement
process improvement.
◦ It is a lean-management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state
for the series of events that take a product or service from the beginning of the specific
process until it reaches the customer.
◦ Value Stream Mapping, to help organizations focus on structuring processes around customer
needs.
◦ Value stream mapping, as with other good visualizations, serves as an effective tool for
communication, collaboration and even culture change. Decision makers can clearly visualize
the current state of the process and where waste is occurring.