CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AS A BUSINESS STRATEGY

Continuous improvement as a business strategy



Continuous improvement as a business strategy

Introduction

The case study “Continuous improvement as a business strategy” is based on a steel manufacturing company 'Corus'. It is a subsidiary of Tata Steel (an Indian based steel giant), with its operations primarily based in United Kingdom. The company focuses on providing innovative solutions to its worldwide customers by meeting their desired requirements and need. The company manufactures, distributes steel and aluminium products to the construction companies, automotive industry, mechanical engineering and other markets worldwide. During the course of this case study I have analyzed different aspects of continuous improvement as a business strategy and after a thorough analysis of I have proposed different suggestions in this context in question/answer format.

Question no: 1

Continuous improvement is not just what an organization does. Continuous improvement is what an organization is. It is how an organization is organized and how it continues to organize over time. John Bessant and Lavid Francis (1999) have called continuous improvement a “dynamic capability” of organization. (Dooley, 1998, pp. 157-174)They define it as “a collection of attributes which are built up over time in highly firm- specific fashion and which provide the basis for achieving and maintaining competitive edge in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment”.

Continuous improvement is a management philosophy that contends that things can be done better. As defined by the Quality guru's some prominent aspects are as under

Focused — continuous improvement addresses specific issues where the effectiveness of operations and processes needs to be improved, where higher-quality Products or services should be provided and, importantly, where the levels of customer Service and satisfaction to be enhanced.

Continuous— the search for improvement is never-ending; it is not a one-off campaign to deal with isolated problems.

Incremental — continuous improvement is not about making sudden quantum leaps in response to crisis situ1tionS it is about adopting a steady, step-by-step approach to improving the ways in which the organization goes about doing things.

Innovation — continuous improvement is concerned with developing new ideas and approaches to deal with new and sometimes old problems and requirements.

The arrangements for implementing the Continuous improvement strategy consist of the creation of an infrastructure of involvement processes including suggestion schemes and improver new groups and the development of tools and assessment procedures. (Hackman, 1995, pp. 309-342) The infrastructure will be composed of people who have been given responsibility for promoting and coordinating continuous improvement programs, and systems for analyzing problems and recording outcomes and proposed actions, assessing results and ensuring that innovations are embedded.

Quality circles as a formal part of the infrastructure of continuous improvement achieved some popularity in the 1980s.

They consisted of small groups of volunteers who carried out related work and who met regularly to discuss and propose Ways of improving working methods or arrangements under a trained leader. Unfortunately it was not appreciated that the approach to using such groups in Japan was only part of a much more comprehensive kaizen ...