Continuous Improvement: What Is Continuous Improvement?

Continuous improvement is the concept of making steady, intentional changes to a company’s business practices with the goal of improving process management, project management, and overall company operations.

Typically, the continuous improvement process employs a steady stream of small changes. Occasionally, however, a continuous improvement program may take bolder steps to improve the current state of a business. This particularly applies to big events like a new product launch. On a day-to-day basis, most continuous improvement initiatives focus on iterative, incremental improvements to the overall business process. Over the long run, these small changes can lead to a substantial transformation.

Continuous improvement methodology hinges on four concrete phases: plan, do, check, and act. This is sometimes called the plan-do-check-act cycle or PDCA cycle, and it reveals the guiding principles of continuous improvement.

1. 1. Plan: The planning stage of continuous improvement involves assessing the current state of the business. In many cases, the current state will be strong, but this step involves rooting out inefficiencies, bottlenecks, management issues, and struggles with team member morale. The management team must come up with quality improvement strategies and metrics for tracking the plan’s success.
2. 2. Do: At this stage, the team must implement the proposed changes essentially as a pilot program. The goal is to take ownership of any problems and address them without upending other components of the business that have been functioning at optimal rates.
3. 3. Check: This is the quality-control stage of the continuous improvement process. The management team must assess whether their small improvement measures are working and whether they truly address the root cause of an issue. The team should rely upon the success metrics they identified in the planning stage.
4. 4. Act: Once the continuous improvement measures have been analyzed and appropriately adjusted, they can be rolled out to the entire organization or to all applicable team members. Everyone from the C-suite to frontline workers must share an understanding of the new improvement measures so that the entire business can pivot as one. This stage is easiest to implement when making small improvements rather than vast, wholesale changes.

Businesses use multiple continuous improvement models to improve workflows, employee involvement, customer satisfaction, and their overall bottom line. Explore five popular models of continuous improvement.

1. 1. Kaizen continuous improvement: The Japanese word “kaizen” roughly translates to “change for the better.” The kaizen technique focuses on the principles of reliable capital investments, a continually engaged workforce, and a prioritization of long-term success over short-term gains.
2. 2. Lean and agile continuous improvement: This continuous improvement methodology, often simplified as the “lean methodology,” has a lot in common with the kaizen approach. It espouses the belief that big organizational changes are most successful when implemented as a steady series of small changes. This elevates employee buy-in and creates an atmosphere of inclusion rather than dictation from a detached executive team.
3. 3. Lean six sigma continuous improvement: This continuous improvement model prioritizes honoring customer wishes, reducing variation, eliminating waste and inefficiencies, pushing for process standardization, seeking employee input, elevating hard data over gut instinct, and optimizing the value stream that leads to the final product.
4. 4. DMAIC continuous improvement: DMAIC stands for “define, measure, analyze, improve, and control.” It is a management system that can be used to apply the principles of the lean six sigma model. This step-by-step methodology, combined with the values articulated in the lean six sigma method, can help a business pursue continuous improvement in a steady, measured, systematic way.
5. 5. Total quality management: This approach, commonly referred to as TQM, has its roots in the manufacturing sector. Like the kaizen method, TQM emphasizes continuous improvement tools that seek input from customers and frontline employees. Among other principles, TQM seeks to break down the barrier between management, team members, and customers and present changes as part of a dialogue that reflects the needs of all stakeholders.

To reap the benefits of continuous improvement in your own workplace, try using the following strategies.

1. 1. Use a kanban board. A kanban board is a visual tool that represents projects in various states including “to-do,” “doing,” and “done.” Kanban boards keep team members aligned during an ongoing improvement project so that everyone knows the state of the process. Kanban boards also reveal bottlenecks that slow down the rest of the process.
2. 2. Seek input from many sectors of your business. Use the planning phase of a continuous improvement project to check in with team members from all areas of your business. Decisions made by the C-suite can alienate frontline workers, so offer those workers channels of communication to offer input and feedback.
3. 3. Break big initiatives into small-scale changes. Businesses take a continuous improvement approach as an antidote to the big, sweeping changes that can throw a company off balance and alienate its workforce or customer base. Even if you have big plans for long-term change, break your plan into small changes that gradually transform the business over a longer period of time.
4. 4. View the process as an ongoing effort. The concept of continuous improvement is that of long-term planning rather than quick fixes to boost short-term profitability. The PDCA cycle time can extend over months or even years, and company leaders must show patience for the improvement methods to truly pay off.

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