Developing an Improvement Plan

The first step that involve in developing an improvement plan is to establish a mission statement and team purpose for the team. It should be clearly defined and approved by the company governing board for quality assurance.

Second is to understand the process such as before attempting to make changes, make sure that all team members understands completely. How it works, what it supposed to do, what the best practices are known pertaining to the process. These questions should be asked by the whole team and pursued together which will give the team a common understanding and eliminate doubtfulness and differences

Next step is eliminate errors. Team members may find errors that can be quickly dismissed. These types of errors eliminated before going to the next stage. It is occasionally referred to as an “error proofing” process.

Step number four is remove slack. This involves evaluating all the steps within the process to find out if they serve a purpose and what that purpose may be. Processes exists that have grown over time with employees continuing to follow them without giving thought to why they are done a particular way, if it could be done better or differently or if it needs to be done at all.

After that is reduce variation. A variation is a procedure comes from common causes or special causes.Variation in a process results from either special causes or common causes. Common causes have slight variations and are almost always there. Special causes commonly result from slight variations and are pretty much always present. Special causes commonly result in special variations in performance but aren’t always present.

Last step is planning for continual improvement. By the time the team gets to this step, the process that is in question should be in good condition. Now the key is to associate the types of improvements made on a constant basis so continual improvement becomes a common part of doing business