3 biggest misconceptions about Continuous Improvement practitioners
Manik Sood
Continuous Improvement Leader @ Springer Nature | Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
In the recent competitive times, every organization is looking forward to reduce cost, customer complaints & rejection and improve profitability and productivity. An easy way out practiced is to inculcate a pillar of Business Excellence or Continuous Improvement in the organization or hire CI practitioners. But there are some misconceptions about CI practitioners which are very important to know by management before their hiring.
?1. They are master of every process
When a CI practitioner is hired, all department heads and process supervisors see him as Einstein or process expert and expect that he or she will solve all of their product/process problems. This is a wrong expectation.
A CI practitioner acts as a catalyst only. These people have technical proficiency or expertise in data analysis and interpretation, problem solving, statistics and systematic approach to complex problem solving such as DMAIC methodology. They may or may not have exposure to the similar process. After all, if a process owner is working with the process for last 10 years, a new comer will not gain the process expertise in just 10 days and put forward the solution to a problem.
It is problem solving & data analysis training and coaching by CI practitioner, leading by example how to solve a complex problem and team work which helps in continual improvement of product and processes. A CI practitioner works not more than a catalyst or a facilitator.
2. They will do all improvement projects by themselves
It is expected that a CI practitioner will go to shop-floor, identify the improvement areas, convince the people and will do all the projects by himself. Production and support teams are too busy to carry out the improvement projects. All the work has to be done by CI person alone. It is another wrong perception. CI practitioners may help in identifying improvement areas but execution and implementation of some improvement is a team work. Everyone has to collaborate and work on project.
Many times the KPIs of different department representatives are set to do their activities effectively. Cost reduction, delivery and service improvement KPIs are allocated to CI persons alone. Individual targets inhibit the team work. Whenever a project is identified, a team needs to be identified to execute it and it must be KPIs of team members to accomplish the project effectively and efficiently. One person is not responsible for all improvement projects. Improvement projects must be handled by teams.
3. They have to do improvement & culture change without Top Management involvement
Many times it happens that due to competitive pressure, CI practitioners are hired and sent to shop-floor for cost saving without providing any support from Top Management.
The role of Top Management is very crucial in such cost saving initiatives because everyone working in the factory is accountable for all work allocated to them by Top Management. Projects are not effective until employees and CI practitioners both have common goals / KPIs and Top Management asks all project teams about the improvement project progress rather than one CI person alone.
International standard that is accepted worldwide on Quality Management System is ISO 9001. In the latest 9001:2015 version, it talks about "Leadership & commitment under clause 5.1" where it mentions - Top management shall demonstrate leadership and commitment with respect to the quality management system by:- (point i) promoting improvement.
This clearly shows that Change Management starts from the top and not from CI practitioner. However, Neither this means that Top Management does CI person's job nor that hiring a CI person alone shows the commitment for improvement.
There are a no. of ways for management to demonstrate leadership & commitment to continuous improvement - For example - Setting objectives related to improvement (Clause 6.2 of ISO 9001:2015), keeping improvement agenda under management reviews (Clause 9.3 of ISO 9001:2015) and keeping shared improvement KPIs for process owners & CI practitioner, not for CI person alone.
More on Top Management role can be read in my other article here.
What is your viewpoint about CI practitioner? Please share in comments section.
Deputy Manager, TQM | CLSSBB | MBA | MSc | LA ISO 17025/ 17020/ 9001/ 45001 | JLPT N4 | JENESYS 2.0 Japan ||
7 年Well said...
Quality Manager at Virtusa
7 年Nice article and should be more referred by the Top Management of the organization...
Executive Director I Chief Executive Officer for Rheinmetall Business Unit Bearings - India
7 年Absolutely Right
Counsellor at SK Associates
8 年Dear Manik. Very nice to see you and especially your article after a long long time. All the attributes and expectations from CI like " process expert and expect that he or she will solve all of their product/process problems" are definitely wrong notion. But since I am in the field of consultancy since more than 20 years Now a days a breed is growing which is Good also who are Domain Expert also apart from System or CI expert. Say for example Welding Expert or Stamping Expert or Plastic Injection Molding etc. Actually since lots of experts of such type are available in market so people expect both things in one person. But Yes Indeed very good article! Manoj Mathur
Experienced Projects & Engineering Manager
8 年Nice summary of what CI should be. But we need to consider also some additional points: 1. The vast majority of managers out there, have no idea what ISO 9000 actually is about. Most common understanding - this is something about quality, give it to the quality or even lab staff and check the box as done ... 2. Very often the CI role is also deeply misunderstood. In many cases this is just one (or maybe the only) option to get an additional person in the team and then load him with whatever comes up. But CI box checked! 3. Sometimes CI is also perceived as a threat - someone telling you, and worse - reporting higher up, how many things you were doing wrong. In the end, you cannot help somebody, who does not really want to be helped. And for this the "customer" must first get the proper understanding - what is quality of management, what is improvement and that none of this is personal.