Best Practices for Continuous Improvement: Continual Improvement

Continual Improvement

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In this video...

Hi, I’m Greg Jacobson from KaiNexus, where we make improvement happen.

All organization are working on improvement efforts, many in the form of projects or improvement events. You’ve probably already heard me talk about Kaizen, and how it generally means “change for the better,” usually in the context of ongoing continuous improvement. Yet, some people associate the word Kaizen only with week-long projects. But if you only do a couple of these events each year, how can these events be considered continuous? It’s true that some opportunities for improvement do require the structure of a formal event, which includes planning, forming a cross-functional team, and gathering lots of data, and KaiNexus has great tools to manage those relatively complex efforts. But other opportunities for improvement aren't big enough or complex enough to require a week-long event, or even a two-day event.

What’s great about KaiNexus is that it’s built to also help with everyday continuous improvement. That’s where you - the everyday KaiNexus user - come in to play, finding and addressing lots of daily opportunities for improvement. An incremental opportunity for improvement might include replacing an automated paper towel dispenser in a hospital nursery with a quieter, manual dispenser that doesn’t wake the tiny patients. Or, it might involve hanging a small hook in the bathroom so contractors can hang their tool belts. Small Kaizens can include physical changes to our workplace, process changes, or small changes to our information systems.

Leading organizations want every staff member and every employee to be a problem solver everyday, focusing on things that we can improve locally, within our team, and with our leaders. KaiNexus helps you communicate and coordinate these efforts, keeping everyone on the same page. Log into KaiNexus to see what your organization is working on. If you have an opportunity for improvement, enter it - it’ll only take you a minute, and will help to get the improvement process going.

Watch more videos from the KaiNexus Education Video series.

Additional Resources:

Interview: Keeping Up the Pace of Continuous Improvement
Blog Post: Six Principles of the Continuous Improvement Model
Blog Post: Continuous Improvement: Prepare for the Hard Times While All Is Going Well
Blog Post: Are You Too Busy for Incremental Improvement?
Blog Post: Continuous Improvement: A Key Part of a Lean Business