Essay Sample about Process Improvement

Improvement processes allow companies in a wide array of industries to adapt become more efficient and have better experiences for the end-users. From retail to manufacturing, to healthcare and transportation. Understanding which methods are best for you and your company/ industry is very important to the success of the process improvements and therefore makes your business more efficient and successful. 

Three of the most popular process improvements are Kaizen, PDCA, and six sigma. Each methodology has similarities between them, but each has its different drawbacks. Understand where each method came to be, the drawbacks and how to choose the right method for your business.

Kaizen, where did it start, and why do we use it. Kaizen originated from Japan, and it is a way of thinking. Think of when you were making dinner on a recipe you have known forever. Over time you have noticed it does not taste the same as you remember. You decide to look at the original recipe and notice you were supposed to add ingredients in at certain steps, but instead you prepped all of the ingredients and threw them in together. You made the same product you always had but the human side of trying to make it faster caused an issue with quality. Kaizen methodology would allow you to be able to make the changes without hurting the overall quality of the dish you have prepared. For example, when making your favorite dish, you realized that you can put all the vegetables together but you have to make sure the chicken is cooked. The little change of cooking the chicken first then prepping the vegetables to be added in saves time. Also by making a little change in your nightly cooking routine, therefore you can make sure each item is cooked correctly and you do not have raw meat or overcooked vegetables. The small improvements can make a large long-lasting improvement of the product, service, or even your nightly dinner. Understanding, this methodology is not a goal, the method allows for making small improvements that can better the final product/service.

PDCA cycle is a continuous improvement tool used to aid project planning. This tool is a continuous four-step process, Plan-Do-Check-Act. From the previous example about making dinner, you realized that you could improve other areas in your life. This method however is different in the way it is set up. Since you do not make the same dinner every night, this method would not be the most helpful. However, every day you do the same thing, you make your bed. Every morning, you make your bed. The process is the same every day. This PDCA method can allow you to make continuous improvements. For example, you want to improve how you make your bed in means of speed without sacrificing energy. Therefore, you decide to try standing on your bed and pulling up the covers, and then throwing on the pillows to save from walking to each side. Now after you do this a couple of times, you then would check to see if you are saving the time you had hoped and happy with how your bed looks. You see that it made no difference so you decide not to continue using that method. Now you are back at the planning stage of the cycle.  

Six sigma was created in the 1980s. It focuses on meeting the needs of customers while creating a more efficient process, increasing profitability. This method looks to reduce the variance in products and plays a significant role in improving the quality of a product/service. For example, you just moved into a new house and your hanging up your window treatments and realized that they are all wrinkled. You decide to bust out your iron and start ironing each one. As you get through three or four of them, you are frustrated because you have so many left to do and you have not hung any up. You also realized that your ironing skills need some work because there are new hard lines in the curtains. Using the six sigma method, you want to find a way of decreasing the amount of time it takes to iron and hang up the curtains and to have a consistent look at all the curtains. Your next step is to measure what is causing the issues. You realize that using the iron, which gets the job done, but requires a lot of time and skill. You remember that you have a handheld steamer your mother had given to you as a gift a while back. You wonder if it would yield the same results as the iron. Testing the steamer on the curtains proves that it can be consistent and requires half the time. Hanging the curtains and then being able to steam them allows for a fast process saving you time.

Why are there different methods? Don’t they all accomplish the same thing?

The Kaizen method, PDCA cycle, and Six Sigma are different continuous improvement methods. Each method improves a process but has different ways and reasons on which one would work best for you. Kaizen uses a bunch of small improvements that together have a large impact on the company. This method is not to solve problems but to make current processes better. PDCA cycle helps start a new process or improve a current process. Six-sigma focuses more on profitability and streamlining current processes to create a better quality product or service for its customers. However, each method accomplishes a common goal, process improvement and each method has the flexibility to be used in a variety of different industries.

What is right for your business?

Like our clients, we tailor each business strategy to your current needs. Therefore, if your company is trying its best to eliminate variance in its products and increase the profitability of your business, then the six sigma method would be best for you. This method allows for problem-solving, data collection in problem-solving, and using the data to generate solutions to your problem. However, if you were just starting, using the PDCA cycle would be the best fit for you. This method is great for creating new processes for your business. This method as explained above is to help our clients design a good starting point in their processes and then continue on their own with improving that process. 

Kaizen on the other hand works in a variety of different environments. We recommend all of our clients to be open to this idea. This idea allows for anyone who has an idea on improving the process regardless of your position. This culture in your company will allow you to have good fresh ideas to problems you might not have known of. We like to use this method in all companies because it constantly challenges all employees to be thinking of how can we do this better, whether it is just how we send emails to machine tooling. The small changes can add up to large changes that are beneficial.