Effective Continuous Improvement

Harnessing the Kaizen Approach to Create a System for Effective Change

Giles Johnston

• Publisher: Staten House
• eBook ISBN:
  9798899653278
• Year: 2012

Are you looking for a change management approach that actually delivers the results you need? Continuous Improvement, or CI, is a heavily used term that often doesn't deliver the results that are hoped for. Common approaches to CI often focus on supporting businesses to eliminate their immediate problems and just become 'OK' in terms of business performance. But what if 'OK' isn't good enough for you? What if you want to move your business from 'OK' to 'good', and then from 'good' to 'excellent'? That's where Effective Continuous Improvement can help. This practical guide will help you take a systematic approach to CI so that you get the results you want and need! A simple systems approach Even if your team have never heard of 'Lean Manufacturing' or 'Kaizen' before, this short book gives you a step-by-step guide to getting the most out of continuous improvement. It will help you ensure that everyone in the business from the most junior person to the most senior person is able to identify improvement opportunities and generate ideas that can streamline, simplify and improve your business. The book includes: • Five strategies to generate improvement ideas in your business, so that you won't ever struggle to create opportunities for improvement. • Ideas on managing the improvements once they have been identified, so that the expected benefits become a reality. • Simple strategies to help you make the most of these approaches. Downloadable templates included Quick start templates are also provided (via a download link in the resources section) so you can get started straight away with these methods. About the author From his past work with clients who have previously struggled to make the move from 'good' to 'excellent', Giles Johnston, a business improvement consultant, has devised a simple method to systematically generate new improvement ideas.

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Why Do Continuous Improvement?
• What This Book Intends To Do
• Common Problems With Continuous Improvement
• Examples
• Preparation
• Getting Your Team Ready
• Commit To Improving
• Method One: The Focal Points Method
• Method Two: Seasons
• Method Three: Blitz
• Method Four: Reverse Brainstorm
• Method Five: Role Models
• Define The Improvement’s Tasks
• Managing The Improvements
• Maintain Your Continuous Improvement System
• Developing Your Approach
• Troubleshooting
• Supporting Approaches
• Final Thoughts
• Links and Resources
• About Giles Johnston