MicroMetl, a Nevada-based manufacturer of heating and air conditioning equipment, analyzed its workflows with the goal of improving product quality and consistency. The application of optimized process improvements helped the company to reduce indirect labor costs by 21%, which helped to reduce prices and increase market share. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America (MHIA) leveraged the principles of the Kaizen methodology to make small, continuous changes to its design process. Finally, the company established a package of standardized modules that reduced errors in the design phase and costs for customers by 5 to 10%.
The 5S model, which is part of the lean and Kaizen methodologies, helps you implement rapid and continuous improvements. The application of the 5S methodology not only promotes safety and reduces costs, but also increases equipment efficiency by eliminating waste from manufacturing processes. The fact that it helps to standardize and brings more consistency to process improvement is another advantage. Six Sigma uses data and statistics to minimize the amount of variation in the final product.
If a process produces less than 3.4 defects per million cycles, it is considered optimized under this model. The 5 Whys analysis is another recognized process improvement technique that focuses on identifying and resolving the root cause of a problem. It's a very simple way to analyze processes in depth and recommend improvements; it's enough to ask five times “Why?” until you figure out what the problem is. Unfortunately, up to 70 percent of business improvement initiatives fail due to problems adopting a culture of continuous process improvement, lack of employee buy-in, and lack of support from senior management.
As an operations leader, your top priorities are likely to be increasing process efficiency, improving the customer experience, and facilitating communication between units. Once you have examined all the elements and identified the correct course of action, review the previous process mapping and create new training materials to ensure that your employees know how to proceed with post-process improvement.
Business process management, or BPM, involves analyzing and improving business processes to ensure continuous improvement.
That's why you need to know the best process improvement methodologies that work for your business and produce the desired results effectively. Start by downloading the free Chrome extension to capture your new workflow or process from start to finish.Repeat this cycle of continuous optimizations until you meet or exceed the process's benchmarks. Now that you know the best process improvement methodologies, start experimenting with your business processes and putting the techniques into practice. This way, if errors occur, everyone can work together harmoniously throughout the process improvement cycle. The Kaizen process improvement methodology aims at the continuous improvement of all business functions through the participation of all employees, from high-level executives to assembly line workers.
When implementing process improvements through Scrum, it is necessary to create an accumulation of pending changes that are going to be implemented. When you face operational challenges, receive customer complaints, or simply want to optimize existing processes, it's time to implement process improvement methodologies.
