What is a Continuous Improvement Software?
A continuous improvement (kaizen) software is an interface that enables you to identify and eliminate waste within your organization.
Why is it important to have a Continuous Improvement Software?
- Real time visibility on improvement efforts
- Accountability of managers towards improvement
- Increased effectiveness of managers
- Increased worker engagement towards company objectives
Technological innovations constantly drive the market’s ability to create more products with less resources. Without a systematic way to drive improvement in your organization, you are deprived of important opportunities to reduce costs, increase production speed and improve product quality. Continuous improvement is very important, but it can be very hard to implement and sustain. Using a specialized continuous improvement software can make it much easier.
What does a Continuous Improvement Software do?
A continuous improvement software streamlines your efforts to:
- Identify improvement opportunities
- Prioritize opportunities
- Manage improvement projects
What features does a continuous improvement software need?
Opportunities for improvement must be identified during the proactive control of operations.
Everybody knows about the suggestion box in the middle of the shop floor and everybody has good ideas every day to improve operations. Why is it that the box is empty or only has suggestions for next year’s Christmas party in it? The Answer: That box is disconnected from where the real issues originate. Connect the identification of improvement opportunities to the daily control of operations, your gemba walks, quality audits, waste management efforts and you’ll see how fast relevant ideas make it to the surface.
Operations control and audit tools work with or without internet connection.
Operations control and audits need to be connected to your continuous improvement processes. Now that they are, you need to make sure that it’s mobile and that access to the operations control features is constant. Nothing hurts your implementation efforts as much as an irregular connection to the tools you’re trying to build habits around. Make sure your continuous improvement solution is not just web-based (made to work only in a web browser) and that you have access to fundamental features without a constant internet connection.
Integrate a meeting management platform.
Collaboration is essential to continuous improvement whether it’s to help each other on a project or to ask for resources to accomplish you goals. Every day, your teams will have ideas of discussion points to add to next week’s improvement meeting. Make it easy for them to share their thoughts in a structured way. Use an online meeting platform that is well integrated with your continuous improvement software to ensure collaboration and follow-up on your improvement initiatives.
Have a way to monitor what use is made of the solution.
Implementing such a solution carries a great number of challenges and overcoming resistance to change by end-users is one of them. Having the possibility to monitor real-time use of your continuous improvement platform you can more easily understand where you should focus your efforts. Maybe one of your supervisors needs more training or doesn’t quite understand the company’s objectives. The software must help you help them by identifying shortcomings in the tool’s use.
Prioritize opportunities according to improvement objectives.
Unfortunately, finding opportunities is not sufficient, they need to be prioritized according to your organization’s needs for improvement. Make sure your continuous improvement software has a way for you to document and search opportunities according to their impacts. e.g. productivity, quality, lead time, customer satisfaction, etc.
Which solution offers those features?
The Tervene continuous improvement app is currently the only off-the-shelf software that gives you access to all these essential features.
