Continuous Improvement Process: Principles and Practices

The Continuous Improvement Process CIP is a means by which an organization creates and sustains a culture of continuous improvement. The organization deliberately seeks to create a positive and dynamic working environment, foster teamwork, apply quantitative methods and analytical techniques, and tap the creativity and ingenuity of all its people. Collective effort is focused to better understand meet internal and external customer needs and to continuously increase customer satisfaction. Employing CIP in an organization can substantially improve the quality of its services or products, increase productivity,, and reduce costs across a broad spectrum of systems, products, and services. A few of the major companies that now use and proclaim their commitment to CIP-related management technologies are Phillips, Ford, Xerox, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Toyota, Honda, Boeing, Chrysler, and Texas Instruments. In the public sector, DoD has instituted a continuous improvement initiative called Total Quality Management. These and other organizations that are committed to a continuous improvement philosophy report substantial improvements in quality, productivity, throughput, and employee morale, with significant reductions in cost, errors, leadtimes, waste, and customer complaints. The consensus among CIP-oriented companies is that these technologies are the key to their long-term competitiveness and survival. Keywords Quality, Management, Improvement, TQM, Continuous improvement, Process improvement.