Sustaining Process Improvements | Operational Excellence Quick Hits
Quick Hits share weekly tips and techniques on topics related to Operational Excellence. This week’s theme relates to Organizational Performance Part 11: Sustainability. We hope you enjoy the information presented!
Speaker 1: (00:07)
In the last session we talked about Change Management and achieving Buy-In and Process ownership. This session we’re going to talk about Sustainability. So once we get process improvement and we have that continuous improvement culture, we want to have Sustainability. So sustainability, when we look at it, a process improvement is not an improvement if it’s not sustainable. So we need to be able to sustain our improvements and sustainability is ensuring that the improvement does not backslide to previous conditions.
Speaker 1: (00:38)
So what we want to do is when we have that gain to be able to sustain that gain. So if we look at this timeline here with time across the bottom axis and productivity across the vertical axis and we use PDCA which is Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle to drive improvement in the organization. So remember every improvement is a change but not every change is improvement.
Speaker 1: (01:04)
So we’re looking for those elements that are actually improving the system performance. So we do the PDCA analysis, we implement the improvement and we gain some level of productivity. So we jump up to the next level, so what we want to do is prevent from backsliding. So we have to put a wedge in place to prevent the backsliding and to ensure that we can use that foundation for the next level of improvement.
Speaker 1: (01:32)
So this wedge that’s showing here in this picture is the things that we’ve already talked about. Building accountability into the process, making that management window small so we get immediate feedback on the process and if we’re not achieving the gains we take immediate action to correct the situation.
Speaker 1: (01:51)
Also I’m a big proponent of visual management and incorporating visual management into the process, so we can see how the process is performing. So these are some techniques to put that wedge in place and prevent the backsliding so we don’t go back to old habits and previous conditions.