Continuous Improvement Plan

Part of my company’s vision and mission statement is to deliver an exceptional customer experience and be committed to a culture of continuous improvement. Continuous improvement is aligned and supports the corporate strategy to make consistent earnings grow.
Continuous improvement involves all employees applying standard methods and tools to solve problems. My department has been involved in three kaizen events. I, personally, have been involved in two out of the three events, and I have been asked to participate in another event next week. A kaizen event is designed to help understand current state, identify waste or non-value added steps, discuss and evaluate ideas for improvements, and develop a plan to execute the newly design future
After the mapping is complete, the current state is evaluated for waste. Waste is work that does not directly add value to the product or service but consumes time and resources. There are seven types of waste. The acronym “TIMWOOD” is used to remember the seven types of waste: transportation, inventory, motion, wait time, over production, over processing, and defects. These wastes are noted on different color post-it notes. After the waste is identified, it is time to evaluate the current state for opportunities for improvement. Improvement opportunities are one-item-flow, standard work, visual controls, and pull systems. These improvement opportunities are also noted on different color post-it notes. Depending on the steps in the process, this usually wraps up the first day of the event. If there a lot of steps in the process, identifying waste and opportunities for improvement could roll over to the next day. At the end of each day sponsors of the event are guided through a daily review of progress, review activities and conclusions, as well as barriers and resource needs for the next
When mapping out the future state, the team will eliminate the waste in the current process, incorporate the process improvements from the current state, and use the creative ideas from the ideal state. The team differentiates between Just-Do-It activities and items that need to be placed on the continuous improvement newspaper. Just –Do-It activities are improvements that can be completed by an individual or a few individuals without requiring involvement by multiple departments in problem solving. Team members help create the new process and provide input on how things will flow. In the future state, the improved plan should contain solutions that can be implemented within 90 days of event