Organizations that adopt the continuous improvement approach to business management have many tools and techniques at their disposal. Some organizations leverage these instruments as part of a structured business methodology such as Lean, Six Sigma, or Toyota Kata, while others take advantage of them independently. Improvement management software supports them all in various ways and creates a unified platform for all types of improvement work.

We are lucky to have the chance to work with many companies looking for ways to deploy, enhance, and maintain a continuous improvement model for their organization. Many companies come to us with the same group of basic questions, so we thought it might help to share the answers to those we are asked most often.

What is the way of thinking behind continuous improvement?

The continuous improvement model is based on an idea called Kaizen. It is the philosophy of always looking for ways to improve operations and, therefore, results. Central to the approach is the belief that every part of an organization’s operations and processes can be improved and that the workers who are most closely involved are best positioned to identify opportunities for improvement.

We’ve never met a business leader who is confident that every process in the organization is running perfectly. Every leader wants to find new ways to lower costs, improve customer satisfaction scores, gain more efficiency, and uncover new ways of driving revenue. The difference between organizations that achieve these goals and those that don’t frequently comes down to the structure upon which continuous improvement initiatives are built.