Continuous

Improvement
Strategies
DANISH KHAN
Continuous Improvement
Strategies
 The improvement strategies were evolved, experimented &
published by the quality gurus
 Juran’s trilogy
 Kaizen
 Kaizen Blitz
 5S practice
 Three Mus
 The seven deadly wastes
 Business Process Re engineering
Jurans Trilogy

 Good financial results are achieved through 3 managerial processes

namely planning, control & improvement
 Quality planning
 Quality Control
 Quality improvement
 Jurans Trilogy means “managing for quality is achieved by the use of
3 managerial processes of planning, control and implementation”
Kaizen

 This concept was born in Japan after World War II

 Kaizen means continuous improvement
 Kai means change or to correct and zen means good
 Its a company wide philosophy oriented towards continuous
improvement
 Kaizen strategy is credited with being key of Japnese competitive
success
Kaizen- continuous improvement

 It means gradual, orderly and continuous improvement.

 Kaizen doesn’t need any capital investment
 It requires time and efforts of every employee
 Continuous improvement is achieved through improving the current
way of manufacturing and eliminating wastes
 Kaizen calls for never ending improvements
 2 activities of Kaizen
 Maintenance
 Improvement
3 principles of Kaizen

 Work place effectiveness

 Japanese have developed 5S tool to address work place effectiveness
 Elimination of waste, strain & discrepancy
 Standardization
 Of processes, materials, machinery to represent the best, easiest &
safest way of doing a job
 Effective means to measure performance & measure the same
 Standardize the training program
 Standardize the procedures for preventing occurrences of errors &
minimizing variability
Kaizen

 Kaizen advocates use of 7 quality tools for problem solving

 It also calls for using PDCA cycle for improvement of processes
 Kaizen can be implemented in 2 ways
 Gradual improvement of processes
 The implementation teams use 7 tools, 5S, reduce 3MUs, use PDCA
 Kaizen Blitz
 It’s a quick improvement methodology
 It lasts for about a week
 Its known as a Kaizen workshop
 A cross functional team is formed
 The team studies the process, collects & analyses data, discusses improvement
options & recommends the changes
Kaizen Blitz

 Toyota after achieving JIT started looking at their vendors.

 They visited Gemba meaning workplace of a vendor and
conducted Gemba Kaizen for three or four days
 Toyota began conducting Kaizen Blitz to suppliers in the early 70’s
 It involved movement of machinery, modifying equipment, change
in electrical connections etc
 Kaizen Blitz teaches core skills to the cross functional team.
 Whether its Kaizen blitz or Kaizen it involves
 Application of 5S
 Reduction & elimination of 3 Mus
 Standardization of effective methodologies for carrying out work
5S Practices
 It’s a management tool focused on fostering and sustaining high quality
housekeeping
 Seri/Sort
 Separate out all unnecessary things & eliminate them
 Seiton/Straighten
 Arrange the essential things in order, so that they can be easily accessed
 Seiso/Scrub
 Keep machinery & working environment clean
 Seketsu/Systematize
 Make cleaning & checking as a routine practice
 Shitsuke/Standardize
 Standardize the previous four steps
The Seven Deadly Wastes
 Toyota identified the following 7 types of wastes as the most common in industries
 Waste from overproduction
 Due to failure of production planning when money is blocked in unsold products. Over
production is very harmful
 Waste due to waiting time
 WIP is a direct measure of quality of the organization. A product is nearly completed but
waiting for a particular part to arrive from another country. WIP is an example of waste
due to waiting
 Transportation waste
 Unnecessary transportation is a waste. Distance traveled should be kept at a minimum
 Processing Waste
 If a process is held up due to breakdown of the machinery, money is lost. Design should
be such as to enable easy manufacturability, testability & maintainence
Seven wastes……

 Inventory waste
 Waste of Motion
 The purpose of driving is to reach the destination on time & not to spin
the wheel. This happens if a person doesn’t have a Map
 If a worker isnt trained there will be lot of motion but no work. Searching
for things, non availability of correct tools, non monitoring the running
machine etc. The objective of the organization should be to add value
by every motion of the employee & machinery
 Product Defects
 The defective parts causes loss of money. Managing scrap causes
unnecessary work like, safe custody, accounting, disposal as well as
causes strain on the space available for good manufacturing
Business Process Re-engineering

 “Defined by Hammer & Champy as the fundamental rethinking and

radical redesign of business process to achieve dramatic
improvement in critical, contemporary measures of performance
such as cost, quality, service & Speed”

 Re engineering means scrapping the organizational charts and

starting again
When

 BPR is used when

 The competition outperforms the company
 There are conflicts in the re-engineer
 There is an excessive use of non structured communication
 A more continuous approach of incremental improvement is not
possible
Concepts

 Radical:
 Radical Redesign refers to getting to the root cause of things, not
just making superficial changes and throwing away the old.
 This requires a disregard for all existing structures and procedures.
 Its about inventing new ways of accomplishing work that is not
business improvement but reinvention.
 Dramatic: Achieving quantum leaps in performance & not making
incremental improvements
3 R’s of Re-engineering

 Rethink
 Redesign
 Retool
Five key principles of BPR are

 1. Strategic redesign of process

 2. Involvement of right teams of people.
 3. Wise use of information technology.
 4. Changed management style
 5. Continuous improvement of process.
THE REENGINEERING PROCESS

 Reengineering is applied to any business process. The steps involved

are
 STEP 1 – State a case for action / Planning
 STEP 2 – Identify the process/ Process Study
 STEP 3 – Evaluate enables for reengineering/ study the best
practices
 STEP 4 – Understand the current process
 STEP 5 – Create a new process design / Redesign
 STEP 6 – Implement the reengineered process
Benefits

 Elimination of non value adding activities

 Adaption to change
 Creation of product differentiation
 Empowerment of employees
 Reduction in product development time
 Reduction in lead time
 Reduction in response time
 Reduction in inventory and other related costs