WHAT DOES CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT MEANS? WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE IMPROVING?
The process itself:
- How long the process lasted?
- How much raw material was used?
- How much scrap we had?
- How many times they stopped the machine?
- How many times the customer complained?
- How many times the customer called and said thank you?
How you analyze all this? With the information you gathered over the time. You collect the information, look at it, and examine it (by charts, by tables or reports). You try to understand what is going on. Then you arrive to a conclusion.
How all this is relevant to constant improvement? After examining the information and you get a sort of a picture, you must take measures of improvement. The ISO 9001 standard demands that in paragraph 8.5.1. You decide how to act according to the information.
In order to begin a continual improvement process you must check first where you are according to what is expected of you. What are your results in relevance to what was determined for you? Goals do not always supposed to be measurable numbers like sales or incomes. According to the ISO 9001 standard goals and targets must relate to the realization process:
- Improvement in Customer's satisfaction
- Reducing customer's product returns
- Reducing customer's complaints
- Reducing product disqualifications
According to your state you must initiate improvement actions. For every process that does not achieve his goals, you must determine improvement actions (we highly recommend documenting it in a plan). Although you must not document it, you would have to proof that you performed it. Confusing? Well, this is the ISO 9001Standard.
So now we know that first, you must determine where you need continual improvement. The need for continual improvement can come from the top management as well. The top management makes decisions in their long meetings. Their decisions are usually general and vague. Something like: - Increase sales
- Introduce new products
- Gather more customers
- Upgrade the services
- Reduce problems
- Be better
According to the ISO 9001 standard these can be the quality targets however they are documented or not. In order manage all that you need a tool. The tool must provide you with abilities to manage all parameters. Managing continual improvement is also called task management. Task management obtains you with right actions to perform. Top management ordered the decisions and you must accomplish. In order to get results you must define actions to perform. Each action is actually a task. Any task could be divided into sub – tasks. If you summon the entire tasks you will get a project (it doesn't always must be called a project but for now we will stick to the term).
For any project or decision it is necessary to decide: - What is needed to achieve
- Who is responsible
- Until when the Task must be accomplished
- What are the resources needed
Let's take the division and analyze it. WHAT IS NEEDED TO ACHIEVE
Putting words into actions. Let's take an example. The top management decided to market a new product. We must take this decision and create tasks to perform. At the end of the process a new product must be marketed. The tasks can be something like: - Searching for new markets
- Locating suppliers
- Design, research and development
- Meetings
- Passing information from one department to another.
Every one of these example divides into sub tasks and all of them must get results at the end. It could reach until thousand of tasks. You don’t believe? If you have any friends in the software developing industry, they can approve it.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE It is needed to define who is responsible for any task. Who needs to perform, who needs to report and who is measured. Any task must have a "papa" or a "mama". Defining someone in charge should be documented as well. In cases of multi tasks, un doubtfully some tasks would be left behind or forgotten. The same tasks that are usually perceived as hard work. If no one is responsible they would be done late if at all. Only after the top management will start to ask their questions, then someone will wake up. Therefore it is important to link someone to any task. Don’t forget to document it. After all we are working according to the ISO 9001 standard… UNTIL WHEN THE TASK MUST BE ACCOMPLISHED Any task must be limited in time. This is a main character of a project: a starting point and a finish point. Time is a resource. It is needed to be managed as any other resource. Top management want results (and usually fast without consideration with the real life outside the board meeting). That means that you must manage time and link it to the tasks. Otherwise you won't even know that you are behind schedules.
WHAT ARE THE RESOURCES NEEDED This is a common parameter for all tasks in the world, we believe. Usually the resources are limited. Therefore you must seek that you don't exceed over what was allocated for the task. The matter becomes much more complex when tasks multiply and also the resources.
TOOLS FOR TASK MANAGEMENT Today there are a lot of solutions for Task Management but we would deal with the options in other articles.
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