Continuous Improvement now and in the future

For this blog, I spoke to Alessandro Lasi, Global Director of Continuous Improvement for a global player within the Machinery Industry, which has 40 manufacturing sites and around 120 smaller locations where they provide the service. Alessandro has over 15 years’ experience in Continuous Improvement (CI) leadership positions. Alessandro’s employer is a leading water technology company committed to "solving water" by creating innovative and smart technology solutions to meet the world's water, wastewater, and energy needs.

?Continuous Improvement for Alessandro: the 3 P’s

“Continuous Improvement can neither be defined as a toolbox nor as a program or project: Continuous Improvement is a culture, where people, before techniques and tools, are real the game changers. I sometimes like to think it is around 90% about people and 10% about tools”, according to Alessandro. He describes Continuous Improvement by using the “3 P’s” analogy:

·??????Purpose: we need to start by identifying who the customer is, and understanding what value is for the customer (voice of the customer). That’s where we need to start aligning with our strategy. Alessandro refers to Jack Welch, who said “the best improvements start from out of the company, because they start from customer’s needs”.

·??????Process: we need to remove waste and complexities from our processes, to make them safer, easier, faster, and more sustainable. A key point Alessandro raises here is about organisational complexity (“departmental silos”), preventing value to flow to the customer in seamless way.

·??????People: Continuous Improvement needs to challenge the status quo by winning people’s hearts and minds; we need people to be trained, and, embracing Continuous Improvement by understanding “What’s In It For Me” in any, small change.

?How can Continuous Improvement thrive in modern companies?

“We need an army of Improvers”, Aessandro means that Continuous Improvement needs to be for every single employee at a company. To be able to do so, there is a clear need for a very strong top-down commitment, paired with a bottom-up strong base. “You only get to what I call “the Sweet Spot” when you match those two directions; only company values, such as psychological safety and respect for people can make it sustainable”, said Alessandro.

Top-down commitment means that every senior leader, including C-levels and VP’s, need to speak the same language when it comes to Continuous Improvement. For example, they need to lead by example by owning, facilitating, or attending Kaizens, asking people around them critical questions (“Why?” instead of “Who?”) and leading by examples through Gemba Walks (a Japanese term meaning “where things happen”). Bottom-up strong base means that you need people to be educated, trained, and involved in improvement initiatives (Kaizens) to make them live, breathe, and share their learnings with the rest of the organisation. The role of Continuous Improvement Leaders is to tie all these dimensions together and make the Sweet Spot sustainable once reached.

?Top of mind

Some Companies launched programs such as the Point Kaizen. “These are very small step improvements (Smallest Executable Steps), so people get used to working with Continuous Improvement. People are trained to see waste, and they are encouraged to use their creativity to remove waste and simplify processes. Point Kaizens are shared and made visible throughout the company, showing that everybody, everywhere, can realise consistent impact on daily activities through Continuous Improvement. But before you can even start with this, you really need to listen to the people. First, we check where people currently are, why they do what they do, and most important let them understand what the urgency is of changing and the risk of not changing the way they work.

You usually start improvement activities by selecting promoters. Those ones who are on board from the beginning. They are the best actors and subject matter experts for Kaizens or Point Kaizens: once an improvement is realised and standardised, promoters become the best advocates to win hearts and minds of those more reluctant ones. That’s how we start challenging the status quo, by creating visibility, engagement and promoting the ‘what is in it for me’,” tells Alessandro.

?Trends in CI

“There are several different techniques when it comes down to Continuous Improvement. However, do you know how many Transformation efforts do fail? About 75%. This obviously does not sound sexy. Therefore, you really need to start from the beginning and try to really understand the root cause of why 75% of those techniques are failing”, said Alessandro. For example, most common root causes are lack of sustainment from top management, lack of understanding that Continuous Improvement is not short-term endeavor, and not even a cost cutting exercise. It is a culture, a mindset, before just a bunch of tools. Continuous Improvement is probably the most impactful long-term strategy for any business to grow. Sounds surprising?”

?Continuous Improvement in the future

According to Alessandro, there are lots of different technologies that can be leveraged when it comes to accelerating improvements and process transformations. “At my current employer, for example, we’re testing VR technology to improve our training strategies, regardless the hierarchical level of people. This avoids a lot of traveling but they can still have an effective and engaging experience”, said Alessandro. “Another example is represented by enhancing our service processes through the use of VR, which again shortens process time to respond to customer needs when scattered across a large geographical area.”

Alessandro suggests any tool need to be adapted to the problem, instead of the tool being applied on the situation: this allows the percentage of transformation failure to drop. Alessandro is already working on testing the virtual reality to make it more professional and make sure that it runs more efficient. The aim is to make processes, waste and complexities more visible for everybody (e.g. virtual dashboards), creating the base to solve business problems. This, paired but not limited, with the points and techniques discussed in this article, is what Alessandro is leveraging to make business transformation journeys shift from a 75% failure rate down to at least 25%.

On a daily basis, QTC Recruitment speaks with professionals like Alessandro about the developments within their industry and organisation. This provides us with knowledge about that organisation and the industry it operates in. It allows us to understand the organisations, its developments, and their needs. This enables us to help Food (Sciences) organisations regarding their recruitment challenges with a tailormade approach. Check out what we can do for you here.

More about Alessandro Lasi:

·????https://www.ci-expertcorner.com/

·?????linkedin.com/in/alessandrolasi

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