Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog: Deming, lean thinking, innovation, customer focus, continual improvement, six sigma.
June 10, 2008
Continual Improvement

Dr. Deming used to using the term continual improvement (rather than continuous improvement) later in his life because that would include continuous and dis-continuous improvement (innovation, etc.). I use continual improvement for that reason also. I think the improvement process

  • must be never ending
  • must focus daily on how any process can be improved
  • must focus on adopting improvement systemically (not just locally, by one person or team)
  • must focus on discontinuous improvement which could include high energy kaizen events and dramatic innovation
  • must include a study phase (PDSA) where the improvements are evaluated to determine whether they actually had the anticipate effect
  • and must include improvement of the improvement process itself

To me, continual improvement encompasses both continuous and discontinuous improvement.

Reflecting on: Continuous Improvement vs. Continual Improvement

Related: Process Improvement and InnovationBetter and DifferentKaizen the Toyota WayChange is not ImprovementThink Long Term Act DailyEncourage Improvement Action by Everyone

4 Responses to “Continual Improvement”

  1. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Better Meetings Says:

    [...] and ask what can be improved. Improve your meeting process over time. If you don’t have an improvement process in place for meetings that is a bad [...]

  2. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Future Directions for Agile Management Says:

    As I learned about agile software development, what I saw was a great implementation of management improvement practices focused on software development…

  3. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Out of the Crisis Seminar Says:

    [...] and ineffective behavior. You will learn how to overcome these problems and focus on creating a system of continual improvement, just as Toyota and other Japanese firms did some fifty years [...]

  4. Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Building a Great Workforce Says:

    [...] practice, not just words) is also very wise. In my experience far to little emphasis is placed on continual improvement of what many companies will say is their most important asset: their people. If you don’t [...]

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