Developing strategic continuous improvement capability

In developing CI capability, organisations need to move to a level of development in which strategic goals are communicated and deployed and where improvement activity is guided by a process of monitoring and measurement against these strategic objectives. Policy deployment of this kind is more prevalent in Japanese examples and in a handful of cases in Western firms. Implementing it poses significant challenges and requires a different and additional toolkit of enabling resources. This paper reports on the experience of policy deployment in Japan and in Western enterprises and explores some of the implementation issues raised.

[1]  G. Stalk,et al.  Fix the process, not the problem. , 1990, Harvard business review.

[2]  J. Bessant,et al.  High-involvement innovation through continuous improvement , 1997 .

[3]  D. Garvin.  Building a learning organization. , 1993, Harvard business review.

[4]  Samuel Hollander,et al.  The Sources of Increased Efficiency: A Study of DuPont Rayon Plants , 1965 .

[5]  Dean M. Schroeder,et al.  Training, Continuous Improvement, and Human Relations: The U.S. TWI Programs and the Japanese Management Style , 1993 .

[6]  Anders Berger,et al.  Continuous improvement and kaizen: standardization and organizational designs , 1997 .

[7]  D. Leonard-Barton,et al.  Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation , 1995 .

[8]  R. W. Schuring,et al.  Re-inventing suggestion schemes for continuous improvement , 1998 .

[9]  Thomas H. Lee,et al.  A New American Tqm: Four Practical Revolutions In Management , 1993 .

[10]  A quality improvement framework: Application and comparative analysis , 1995 .

[11]  J. Pfeffer.  Competitive Advantage Through People , 1994 .

[12]  D. Teece,et al.  The Dynamic Capabilities of Firms: an Introduction , 1994 .

[13]  P. Senge.  THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE , 1997 .

[14]  Tudor Rickards.  Creativity at Work , 1989 .

[15]  Anders Berger,et al.  Continuous improvement: design, organisation and management , 1997 .

[16]  Paul Lillrank,et al.  Continuous Improvement: Quality Control Circles in Japanese Industry , 1989 .

[17]  William Acar,et al.  Standard-Maintaining and Continuous-Improvement Systems: Experiences and Comparisons , 1990 .

[18]  Iwao Kobayashi.  20 Keys to Workplace Improvement , 1995 .

[19]  I. Nonaka,et al.  The Knowledge Creating Company , 2008 .

[20]  John Bessant,et al.  Learning tomanage innovation , 1996 .