Process Improvement

There are some requirements to be fulfilled, so that improvements can be effective and you may build up a culture of change in your company.

It is not enough to analyse processes and to take measures. This means that as a rule this course of action leads to short-term effects, that will pass by quite quickly. Future efforts concerning improvements will be additionally complicated.

Effective optimising means to convince process-involved employees of improvements and to create an self-interest on further improvements. This basic principle is always valid: There is nothing you cannot improve.

Therefore an enterprise, which wants and has to improve processes constantly, has to create a business culture, which supports changes and whose employees carry out changes on their own initiative. Confidence of its employees is necessary to create this business culture; this confidence is based on the company's main ideas and living values.

Direction and regulation of this initiative of process improvement, both need substantiated concepts, based on this business culture. To adopt  other companies' "success strategies" unchecked is a frequent mistake. About this fact Deming writes in his "Principles of Management":

"Only accept others' methods and procedures, when all methods and requirements are known and understood. Exemplary behavior does not teach anything, if the theory behind this is not known and understood".

If substantiated concepts are available, you may choose methodologies to implement these systematically. Current methods like CIP or Six Sigma consist of a bundle of tools. Most of these tools conduce the analysis of cause of errrors in processes. It is very important to convey results of error cause analysises to your employees. This an essential basic requirement for acceptance of measures, which have to be taken to avoid causes of error.

Finally, it's an open secret, that you will only acheive improvements, if you implement measures. Employees' self-interest in implementing these measures and in sustainability has to be a basic requirement, otherwise the above mentioned disadvantages of missing and short-term effects would be imminent. Therefore tools, which indicate an imminent degradation, should be created.