Almost every industry and profession develops a language of its own. Scientists, lawyers, doctors, and many other vocations have a set of vocabulary that sounds like gibberish to everybody else. In much the same way, the practice of continuous quality improvement has developed a language that is unique to it. Some terms are generally used across all improvement methodologies, while others are specific to particular practices such as Lean and SixSigma.

We thought it would be useful to offer a quick list of some of the most common and important terms. If you are just getting started with continuous quality improvement, this is a great place to start. It’s also a terrific resource for new employees. We’ll link to more detail about each of the terms we mention.

As a quick aside, you may notice that many of the terms are Japanese in origin. This is because many of the most popular continuous quality improvement approaches in use in the United States today began in Japan. The Toyota Production System (TPS) was especially influential in the early 1980s as American business leaders started to deploy some of the same approaches that helped Japan’s auto industry turn around after the second world war.

Kaizen — In Japanese, kaizen means “good change.” Pages and pages have been written about the meaning of kaizen. Still, the short version is that kaizen embodies the idea that everything can be improved, that improvement should be constant, and that positive change is the responsibility of every person in an organization.

A3 Problem solving — The A3 is the CQI technique for capturing all of the elements of a problem, including identification, analysis, review, improvement planning, and project management, all on one piece of paper. (A3 refers to the European paper size that was typically used.) These days, most organizations manage A3 projects with software designed for the purpose.

5S — 5S refers to a workplace organization method that uses five words that start with the letter S in both English and phonetic Japanese. They are seiri (sort), seiton (systematic arrangement), seiso (shine), seiketsu (standardize), and shitsuke (sustain). An organized workplace with visual queues helps to reduce waste, maximize performance, and improve quality.

Control Charts — Control charts, also referred to as process behavior charts are tools used to visualize whether or not a process is in a state of statistical control. Process result data is plotted on a graph that shows the expected statistical deviation. When data falls outside that deviation, or trends in specific ways, the process is considered out of control and intervention is needed.

DMAIC — DMAIC is an improvement cycle with five phases: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. These steps are used to help ensure that improvements are well planed, driven by data, measurable, and repeatable.

The 5 Whys — The 5 Whys is a question-based method for finding the root cause of a problem or defect. Team members ask why something happened, then why again, and again until the source of the issue is clear—asking why five times will often, but not always, reveal the root cause.

Gemba Walks — In Japanese, Gemba means “the real place.” In continuous improvement, Gemba walks are a practice during which managers go to the places where work is done to observe, show respect, and spot potential opportunities for improvement.

Hoshin Kanri — Hoshin kanri, also called hoshin planning or strategy deployment, is a step-by-step planning, implementation, and review process for organizational alignment around breakthrough objectives. The words Hoshin Kanri can be interpreted as “direction management.”

The process is designed to keep the entire origination focused on a few strategic goals. And ensure that the goals are clearly communicated, and everyone is responsible for the success of the plan.

Kanban — Kanban, also known as visual management, is a system of graphic clues that indicates what to produce, when to produce it, and how much is needed. Kanban has five principles: visualize the workflow, limit the work in progress, manage flow, make process policies explicit, and improve collaboratively.

OI (Opportunity for Improvement) — Opportunities for improvement, OIs for short, are any potential change that might improve a given task or process. Employees are trained to look for and report opportunities for improvement as a method of bottom-up leadership. Ideally, each opportunity will be captured, evaluated, and potentially implemented within structured improvement management software.

PDSA — PDSA or Plan, Do, Study, Adjust is an alternative cycle for the continual improvement of a product or process. The PDSA cycle is applied against the current Standard work, and it results in a new Standard. The sequence is repeated as needed to work even closer toward a perfect process.

Standard Work — In continuous quality improvement, Standard work is the current best practice for every process. It forms the basis of all improvement, including the PDSA and DMAIC improvement cycles. Employees are expected to perform each activity to the current Standard until a new one is developed. Standard work must be available to each process operator in the place where work is done.

While this list isn’t exhaustive, we hope this quick look at some essential continuous quality improvement terms is helpful. Every one of them is worth learning more about, so we’ve included links to content that describes each term in more detail.