Understanding the Value of Continuous Improvement Teams

From a bird's eye view, every organization is a complex symphony of resources and processes. The structure is usually rife with inefficiencies and defects, which impact quality control, customer satisfaction, and bottom line profitability. Continuous Improvement and Six Sigma projects are deployed to identify and eliminate these inefficiencies and defects. Project members use a rigorous multi-step system through which they isolate root causes, establish benchmarks, and create solutions that produce measurable results.

Once a solution has been integrated within a given process and has successfully eliminated the targeted inefficiencies, it must be evaluated continuously to track its effectiveness. Continuous Improvement and Six Sigma teams will often relinquish the ongoing maintenance and tracking duties to others.

In this article, I'll explain how Continuous Improvement teams help to move organizations from a silo-based departmental hierarchy to a structure that supports a more fluid communication platform. We'll also explore why such efforts must be actively managed and how a plan can easily yield misleading results.

Breaking The Organizational Silo Structure

Companies tend to cultivate departments that operate within an organizational vacuum. That is, their responsibilities are fulfilled with a low level of interaction with other departments. This creates a silo structure. Rather than a flat landscape across which communication flows easily, the landscape is filled with departmental silos. Each silo becomes an organizational ecosystem unto itself. The larger the company, the more prevalent the problem.

Like Six Sigma groups, Continuous Improvement teams require contributions from multiple departments within an organization. They draw upon employees from various divisions and bring them together under one umbrella. In effect, the resulting group represents each division within a company and is tasked with a shared objective. This tends to erode the silo structure.

Guiding The Efforts Toward Results

It is important to manage the efforts of Continuous Improvement teams by providing them with Future State and implementation plans. Similar to Six Sigma groups, they are often forced to choose from a menu of processes to review. On their own, there is a tendency to focus upon projects that yield departmental efficiencies without triggering systemic benefits for the organization. This often gives the group a feeling of accomplishment. But, it is largely illusory since the efficiencies achieved are compartmentalized.

Both Future State and implementation plans align the group's efforts with the organization's broader objectives. Both plans help the Continuous Improvement team focus their attention upon processes that will yield systemic results that impact the company's bottom line profitability.

An Example Of How Plans Can Go Awry

To illustrate how the efforts of a Continuous Improvement team (and by extension, a Six Sigma initiative) can easily miss the mark, consider a firm that manufactures a product. To bring the product to the end customer, it must go through several processing steps. Suppose the group that is tasked with eliminating inefficiencies focuses their attention upon one of the beginning steps. Let's further suppose that, as a result of their efforts, they are able to move the item through that step 25% faster. What happens in the event the item arrives at the next step early, and is forced to wait?

Notice how the Continuous Improvement - or Six Sigma - team has successfully made a given process more efficient. However, they have failed to trigger a systemic advantage for the manufacturing firm. The group's efforts would have yielded better results had they been guided by a Value Stream Map and Future State plan.

In order to gain the most significant benefits from Six Sigma and Continuous Improvement teams, companies must prioritize their projects according to their Lean objectives. In doing so, they'll flatten the silo-based organizational structure, improve communication between departments, and enjoy efficiencies that are truly systemic.