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eBook: Digital Transformation in Building Materials
The building materials industry is responsible for supplying us with what we need to keep our built world safe,...
January 31, 2020
Continuous improvement is the ongoing practice of implementing change to better products, processes, or services. Several methods to achieve continuous improvement leverage data, analytics, experience, and observation to identify and pursue opportunities for improvement. This includes DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) and PDCA/PDSA (Plan, Do, Check/Study, Act).
Historically, continuous improvement practices have been applied in manufacturing environments. With the proven success in production, many firms expanded these techniques to business processes, such as Purchasing or Safety. This has led, in recent years, to the service industry adopting continuous improvement tenets.
While there are multiple models to follow for continuous improvement management, the four steps outlined in Deming’s Cycle (PDCA/PDSA) demonstrate their general collective process.
Identify an improvement and determine how to achieve that objective. When starting a continuous improvement journey, this often seems like the easiest step; people tend to have their anecdotal ideas of the bottlenecks and defects plaguing their processes and output.
However, it is critical to analyze the current state thoroughly: capture the workflows present, the desired outcomes of these workflows, and the metrics which indicate performance against those goals.
Once the business knows objectively where it stands, it can determine where it wants to be against those same measurable criteria and identify all the avenues to get there. Defining the current and future states of the business in quantifiable terms ensures projects with maximal value to the business are prioritized.
Example: If quality metrics for a bank indicate a 10% error rate in the past year on loan paperwork completed by customers, the bank could define a goal of achieving no more than a 5% error rate by the end of the following year. Working with loan officers and processors to capture the most common errors observed (such as missing entries or wrong information completed) a plan is developed to transition the paperwork to an electronic format with fields requiring completion before submission and with entry fields restricted to only numerical inputs.
With the implementation plan established, the next step is to execute the plan. However, the “Do” stage is not a thoroughgoing application of the selected changes. It is meant for metered implementation of change and subsequent data collection around the affected workflow. A small-scale approach and monitoring of impact ensures that any unintended consequences can be identified in the next “Check” phase and contained with minimal effect on the business overall.
Example: The example bank develops an electronic version of its loan paperwork with required fields and restricted field formats based on the original errors observed. The electronic form is deployed at a single branch of the bank alongside a process for the existing loan officers to review the electronic submissions and record any errors observed.
Once a pilot change has been established and the new workflow is generating data on its performance, the business studies the information gathered. The pilot results must be compared against the expectations established in the “Plan” stage to determine whether the change had a measurable impact on performance as expected.
If a negative effect or insufficient improvement is realized, the business returns to the prior “Do” phase to trial alternative or modified solutions. For changes proven successful, the project then moves into the “Act” stage.
Example: According to the data collected at the trial bank branch by the loan officers on the electronic loan paperwork, the current version of the electronic document produced a 7% error rate. Therefore, because the desired error reduction to 5% was not achieved during the trial, the bank will return to the "Do" phase and reconsider design of the electronic document, required field, and entry formatting restrictions. The revised document will then be reissued for trial.
In this stage, a trialed change with demonstrated improvement is installed as the new standard for applicable workflows going forward. The tested improvement is deployed to all applicable processes as the new standard, and the supporting business infrastructure is updated to reflect and to sustain this new mode of working.
Example: After observing a 4% error rate at the trial bank branch using the revised electronic loan paperwork, the paperwork was released for use across all the bank branches. Training was provided to all loan officers on the contents of the loan paperwork, and a link for the electronic documents added to the bank member website. All paper copies of the document are removed from each bank branch and obsoleted in the bank’s document control system.
It is important to note that the Deming Cycle and continuous improvement overall is an iterative process. A project through the “Act” phase establishes a new baseline for the operations and becomes the groundwork on which to create further change.
Therefore, the metrics identified in the initial “Plan” phase must continually be monitored to target additional gains and also ensure that improved workflows do not revert to their old ways. Perpetuating this cycle may seem like a large management task; however, designing a company’s continuous improvement program with the following elements will instill it in the company culture as standard way of working.
Although there seem to be many elements to the continuous improvement process and managing it within the business, an off-the-shelf lean execution system (LES) such as L2L's CloudDISPATCH is ready to meet these needs. Whether standalone or partnered with existing MES, ERP, and/or CMMS systems, L2L’s modules are built to capture the current state of the business, capture workflow faults, and manage project execution while remaining accessible and visible to all employees.
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