Good Process Improvement Practices

Good process improvement practices include:

• standardized improvement process (pdsa, or whatever)
• Going to the gemba – improvement is done where the work is done. You must go to the where the action is. Sitting in meeting rooms, or offices, reading reports and making decisions is not the way to improve effectively.
• evidence based decision making, data guides decision making rather than HiPPO
• broad participation (those working on the process should be the ones working on improving it and everyone in the organization should be improving their processes)
• measurable results that are used to measure effectiveness
• pilot improvement on a small scale, after results are shown to be improvements deploy standardized solutions more broadly
• visual management
• Standardized work instructions are used for processes
• one of the aims of the improvement process should be improving peoples ability to improve over the long term (one outcome of the process should be a better process another should be that people learned and can apply what they learned in future improvements)
• quality tools should be used, people should be trained on such tools. The tools are essentially standardized methods that have been shown to be effective. And most organization just ignore them and struggle to reinvent methods to achieve results instead of just applying methods already shown to be very effective.
• the improvements are sustained. Changes are made to the system and they are adopted: this seems obvious but far too often process improvements are really just band-aids that fall off a few weeks later and nothing is done to sustain it.
• goals, bonuses and extrinsic motivation are not part of the process
• The improvement process itself should be continually improved

Various tools, practices and strategies share these characteristics. I happen to like the PDSA cycle (associated with Deming). The A3 process (associated with lean) is also excellent. DMAIC associated with six sigma is also good but is more often done in ways that fail to cover all the points above in my experience.

The Improvement Guide is an exceptional book on this topic. I highly recommend it: other management books I highly recommend.

Related: Change is not Improvement – How to Improve – Where to Start Improvement – Operational Excellence – How to Manage What You Can’t Measure – Making Better Decisions – Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame