Continuous Improvement Starts with Good Data

There is a lot of effort going into continuous improvement in manufacturing these days. Few people would argue that a culture dedicated to continuously improving business operations is not a good thing. Although continuous improvement projects start with the best intentions in mind, they don’t always result in meaningful positive change to the way things are done. 

One of the primary issues with continuous improvement projects is project selection. While there are many areas any business could select to make improvements, not all improvement projects target an area where improvements will have a marked impact to company operational efficiency or the bottom line.  How a project is selected is important. 

The key targets for improvements in most manufacturing companies come in one of four areas: 

• Reduce the time from sales order to shipment 

• Lower the manufactured material costs 

• Lower the manufacturing processing costs 

• Reduce the cost of poor quality 

If you’re going to improve a process, make sure that you have a measurable outcome in mind.  If you’re going to have a measurable outcome, then by definition that means that you need accurate data to baseline and measure the improvement against.  This is where your manufacturing system comes in. Properly set up and managed, it will give you the data that you need to decide what areas need improvement and once completed, whether or not you were successful in creating an improvement, not just change for the sake of change. 

Matt.