BSBMGT516

Facilitate continuous improvement

Summative assessment 1

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Question 1. What is continuous improvement?

Continuous Improvement is often referred to by the Japanese word 'Kaizen'. Kaizen means 'change for
the better' and covers all processes in an organisation. These include engineering, IT, financial,
commercial and customer service processes, as well as manufacturing.

Continuous Improvement involves making continual small improvements to a process rather than big
changes at irregular intervals. This requires close monitoring and control, changes to the uses of
manpower, machinery, methods, materials and money to improve business efficiency.

Continuous Improvement starts with management and under their leadership works down through the
organisation. The underlying theme is that everyone is responsible and has a part to play in making
improvements. All employees must work together to identify the steps needed to improve working
practices. Planning meetings help teams to focus on satisfying customer needs. Visual management
techniques, such as flow charts and wall charts make clear what resources are necessary and who is
responsible for each part in the process.

Question 2. What can you do to support improvements now and in the future? (100-150 words)

Participation is the Key. To be effective, all employees need to own and adopt Continuous
improvements principles. Strong communication is important in building this commitment. Everyone has
a part to play in continuous improvement. All employees can contribute ideas for improving their
working practices. The person doing a job often knows best how to make improvements.

In order to, support improvements now and in the future it requires:

 Good information across the entire business, to assist in selecting the best opportunities.
 Diverse, willing, motivated teams from various departments and from different levels, to
identify problems, to generate new ideas, and to evaluate and implement them.
 Crisp feedback systems to measure the progress of your changes.
 A commitment from all levels of the business with the motivational rewards to make it happen.

Question 3. What processes might be used to ensure that team members are informed of outcomes of
continuous improvement effort? Why is this necessary and how will this contribute toward further
improvements?

Processes for informing team members might include:

 direct consultation
 meetings
 performance reviews
 pictorial representations of data

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  written and verbal reports
 electronic communications
 notices on boards or websites
 public recognition of good work
 knowledge management systems

Providing suitable feedback and ensuring that the improvement initiatives are clearly communicated
helps motivate further improvement. If team members are no informed of the outcomes of their work,
then they have no incentive to perform to higher standards or to inject continuous improvement
measures into future plans. However, employees who are aware that their actions are making a
difference are more likely to continue those efforts and to make suggestions for further improvements.

Question 4. How can an organisation’s continuous improvement processes be communicated to all

stakeholders and how can individuals and teams be encouraged and supported to embrace it?

Decision-making procedures can facilitate the positive attitudes necessary for cooperative relations in
decision-making teams. The workers need to feel a sense of belonging to an organization.

When employees participate in the decision-making process, they improve understanding and
perceptions among colleagues and superiors, and enhance personnel value in the organization.

In a participative decision-making process each team member has an opportunity to share their
perspectives, voice their ideas and tap their skills to improve team effectiveness. As each member can
relate to the team decisions, there is a better chance or their achieving the results. There is a positive
relationship between decision effectiveness and organizational performance. The better the
effectiveness, the better the performance.

Question 5. Having made a decision about what to do to improve an organisation’s processes, what
should you do to plan for the implementation of that change?

Effective communication with employees is necessary to ensure support for changes. Organisation must
set a respectable internal communication.

A combination of both formal and informal methods can be uses to ensure that employees receive
timely, accurate information about potential changes that will impact on them and to which they might
be expected to contribute.

These could include:

 memos
 reports
 email / intranet communications
 web-based message boards
 video-conferencing

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  chat rooms
 face to face individual communications
 face to face group communications
 meetings conferences
 formal presentations

To actively encourage and support employees so they will participate in decision-making processes, it is
necessary to ensure appropriate implementation of decisions.