Saturday 8 December 2018

Changes in Work Behavior for Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is an ongoing, long-term approach to improving processes, products and services. The study of people behavior in relation to the achievement of Continuous Improvement.(Business Process Improvement, Productivity Improvement) began to be complete after the world saw. The superiority of Japaneses companies in their management system and production process.

Understanding Will Continuous Improvement


It is important for you to consider changes in work behavior and corporate culture, especially because of the increasingly fierce competition challenges. You are always struggling with structural changes in the global market, the rapid pace of technological development. The increasing customer orientation of the goods or services they consume.

Various approaches such as Lean and Six Sigma have been apply to improve business performance to the pursue Continuous Improvement (CI). But its success will depend on the quality of work and the behavior of the humans who run it. As a first step, everyone who becomes part of the organization pursuing CI must understand the true meaning of the Continuous Improvement.

Since CI is rooting in the automotive industry in Japan (the machine that changed the world). CI's initial research conducting with regard to people behavior focuses more on cases in the manufacturing industry. But over time and the development of the CI concept as a whole. You can now enjoy new ways of implementing the Continuous Improvement method in various non-manufacturing sectors.

5 Continuous Improvement Principles


Before creating the rules on what the most appropriate teamwork behaviors are for the success of the Continuous Improvement program. How to lead the team to adopt the desired behavior, you must first understand the key principles of the Continuous Improvement strategy. These principles can be called "The Big 5 of Continuous Improvement" . They are:

  1. Know the specifications: what factors will and will not create value for customers, from the customer's point of view. (not from an individual, departmental or corporate perspective).

  2. Identify each step require in the process of producing goods or services, from designing, ordering, and producing goods / services through value steam. To determine the point of waste occurrence (non-value-add).

  3. Realization in action creates a stream of values ​​(without any interruption, rework, back flow, waiting , or scrap ).

  4. Production must run base on customer demand.

  5. There must be an urgency to achieve perfection by constantly searching for and eliminating all imperfect things.

Summarize the five principles in one sentence:
" customer focus, process focus, teamwork, employee participation and continuous improvement ".

Rules on based of principles


Base on the above five principles, you can define and create a set of rules on employee behavior and ways to improve productivity and work effectiveness. According to the needs and characteristics of the business you are running. In addition, as a useful reference resource, you can search the literature on how to form effective teams. What kind of characters (and behaviors) are shown by effective teams in their daily work. (you call it "an effective team in sight general (non-CI) "). So how do you know what kind of character (culture and behavior) does an effective team have in common. Which can be adopted by a team based on the Continuous Improvement principle?

Team Based Continuous Improvement vs. Effective Team in Public View


There is a strong causal relationship between the success of the Continuous Improvement program and the working behavior of the people involved in the program, especially those in front-liners . According to some literature on CI, the value of a manufactured goods or service is most often generated in the lower segment of the company's hierarchical pyramid (Womack & Jones, 2003). Thus, the front-line team has a huge role in the Continuous Improvement initiative and its success.

Some companies are trying to find answers by bench marking between successful CI teams and unsuccessful CI teams. How successful team behaviors run Continuous Improvement, and whether their behavior is similar to teams (beyond the scope of CI) that are also effective and successful.
In doing the benchmarks, here are the questions you should answer:


  • What kind of behavior does the forward-looking team in the CI scope adopt the Continuous Improvement principles, in contrast to the behavior of effective teams in general (which you can find in the literature on effective teams)?

  • To what extent are the boundaries of the similarities between team behaviors that adopt Continuous Improvement with effective teams in general (in the literature)?

  • What behaviors are most often shown by successful teams that adopt the Continuous Improvement method every day?

By answering the above questions, you will find ways to establish the most appropriate and most effective team behavior for the success of the Continuous Improvement program in a company. That can be tailor to the needs and characteristics of your business.

How to Embed the Character Needed for CI's Success?


After getting a character set consisting of everyday behaviors and ways that must be own and master by the vanguard team. It is time to start moving to introduce and instill them to employees. The challenge is, changing behavior is not as easy as turning your palms. But of course, that's not impossible; in fact it is very possible. Especially if your team has been introduce or has been familiar with the principles of continuous Improvement.

Organizations that want to continue to improve business performance will also not hesitate to invest in training change agents. That will encourage behavioral change. They will demonstrate adaptive leadership and decide on the use of problem solving techniques. It need to improve efficiency within the organization.

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