Manufacturing organizations dedicated to continuous improvement look for opportunities to eliminate waste at every juncture. They may spend most of their time looking at core activities like production efficiency because improvements to essential processes result in significant gains.

However, there are many activities on the margins that can also be a significant source of waste. Improvements to these tasks might not yield monumental results, but the good news is they can be improved with just a little bit of attention and effort.

Is it possible that you might have opportunities for improvements hiding in plain sight? Here are a few places to look.

If you think trying to predict anything that will happen in 2021 is insane after what’s happened this year, you have a point. But by applying the lessons learned from 2020 and some strong trends that make sense in this new normal, we think we have a reasonably good idea about what to expect concerning continuous improvement next year.

Here are our predictions. We’ll check back in a year to see how close we came.

One of the most important responsibilities of managers in manufacturing environments is to contain costs. The most obvious cost to eliminate is the cost of low quality. Defective products and lost labor hours add no value to the customer and represent a significant strain on the organization.

To eliminate the waste of low quality, a strategic approach to improvement is essential. Here are five steps that support quality improvement in a meaningful, sustainable way.

We all identify goals to improve ourselves in some way. Whether our goal is to eat better, exercise more, spend more time with our family, or increase our productivity, we all have something we're striving for. Although in too many instances, we lose sight of our goals and fall back to old behaviors and the same results.

Continuous improvement is no different. So many organizations set out on a journey of continuous improvement with gusto and quickly lose momentum, causing their initiative to struggle. How do you prevent your organization from slipping back into bad habits? A sustaining culture of continuous improvement is supported by strategic goal setting.

The principles of Lean and continuous improvement methodologies originated from manufacturing, but there’s no doubt that they have been applied to other industries quite successfully, such as nuclear energy. The nuclear industry believes that there is no defect or opportunity that is too small to go after, and there’s always room for improvement. This important principle is a cornerstone belief of what many refer to as a High-Reliability Organization or HRO. 

When people think of structured continuous improvement methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma, they usually associate it with manufacturing. However, these days, financial services firms, under immense pressure to reduce operational costs and improve efficiencies and effectiveness, are embracing formal continuous improvement programs. Many of the most popular methodologies can easily be tailored to the needs of financial services firms. They can also take advantage of the technology leveraged in other sectors to support improvement.

Leaders who want to develop a culture of rapid continuous improvement have many tools at their disposal. So many, in fact, that it can be difficult to keep them all in mind when deciding how to execute an opportunity for improvement or to address a difficult challenge. Or course, most organizations don’t use all of them at any one time, but each can be remarkably effective when applied to the right situation.

We put together a list of the most common and useful improvement tools and techniques that you can start implementing today.

Leaders that we speak with get very excited about the idea of creating an improvement engine within their organizations. Who doesn’t want a team of players always looking to edge closer to perfection? Of course, achieving this goal is harder than it sounds.

We’ve found that leaders who struggle to create a culture that thrives on improvement make one or more of ten common mistakes. These challenges are probably not breaking news if you’ve been a leader for a long time, but it can’t hurt to check in with yourself from time to time and make sure you are avoiding these behaviors. If you are a new leader, this is an excellent “don’t” list.

Our 2019 KaiNexicon event in Austin was a tremendous success, thanks to all of our fabulous participants and speakers. Lots of valuable information was shared, and long-term connections formed.

The event kicked off with a Keynote from Jess Orr of WestRock Company. This post is a recap of her presentation. We invite you to watch the video as well.

Jess Orr is a continuous improvement manager with over 12 years of experience working in a variety of industries. Her approach has been greatly influenced by the time she spent working directly for Toyota in Georgetown, KY. Jess focuses on equipping and guiding people in the application of improvement principles and practices to elevate the performance of their organizations.

Jess shared that she worked for Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky, for several years. Her experience of working there was utterly transformative, both personally and professionally. Due to some personal circumstances, she had to leave Toyota about four years ago, which was a difficult thing to do. Although it was devastating at the time, in hindsight, Jess believes it is one of the best things that ever happened to her.

A little while back, we had the pleasure of presenting a webinar hosted by Chad Westbrook, a manufacturing engineering manager and AGCO production system manager at AGCO Corporation. AGCO is a full line manufacturer of agricultural equipment. The company makes everything, including tractors, tillers, sprayers, bailers, and other equipment. Chad joined our own Mark Graban to discuss a different way of thinking about problem-solving. This post is a recap of the presentation - watch the full thing for all the details!

A Structured Approach to Problem-Solving

Presented by Chad Westbrook, AGCO

In this webinar, you'll learn a structured approach to problem-solving using the following tools:

• 5G – A tool used to describe a loss phenomenon
• 5W1H – An approach to the revised phenomenon
• 4M1D – Defining the contributing factors to the revised phenomenon
• 4M1D Confirmation – Validating the contributing factors
• 5 Why’s – Root cause and effective countermeasures