A company continuous improvement process is a technique business process management uses that focuses on the constant need to review processes for eventual problems, such as bottlenecks and delays, so that they can resolve them and therefore make operations more efficient and productive.
The improvement process takes place in an incremental way. You analyze tasks individually, promoting specific optimizations that, when they accumulate, make the process as a whole much more efficient.
Now that you know a little bit more about what the continuous improvement process is, let’s look at some important factors so that you can make it happen in your business.
For example: you define a new way to accomplish a task in your company, train the team, guide them, correct them, but in the next month … they go back to the same initial mistakes! Why does this happen?
Lets find out?
See in our blog: Process Improvement – 7 steps to take your business to where you want it to go
4 factors that prevent the continuous improvement process
Are you determined for things to happen in your company, but it seems like nothing has progressed as planned?
Many companies want to implement improvement processes, but they err by not fully understanding how the processes function and the importance of one of the concepts key features: incremental advances, based on data collection for the discovery of problems that the company needs to solve.
1- To solve a particular problem
First priority: Stop everything you’re doing and deal with process improvement X!
Have you heard that phrase before?
Companies should use continuous improvement processes in the production chain as a whole. They’re based on a series of improvement steps, small improvements and optimizations of tasks, procedures and processes, which generate a cumulative effect of efficiency and productivity for the organization.
When you decide to use a continuous improvement process to solve a particular isolated problem, it isn’t as effective and can’t give you the expected results.
Often, as soon as a company solves the problem, continuous improvement efforts cease and they steadily and systematically take away the practice.
2- Excessive expectations
“Gee, you’ve been harping on about continuous improvement for three months now and there’s still no increase in sales?” – This phrase is more common than you might imagine.
Another factor that often leads to the failure of the continuous improvement process is the emergence of unrealistic speculation about the results that a company can achieve.
Many organizations believe that the results of continuous improvement in companies will happen quickly. They believe the effects on results will be highly expressive in this short period of time.
In fact, results will come in time and will be cumulative. This leads many companies to abandon their continuous improvement efforts early.
Also see: The 7 most common pitfalls in a process optimization tool
3- A lack of leadership engagement
– Another meeting with customer service staff to analyze the process? Sorry, let’s leave it for next week …
Don’t feel insulted, this happens in many companies.
If an organization’s strategic levels don’t view the continuous improvement process as fundamental, it will never give them any results.
This is exactly because it’s a slow and gradual process that presents long-term results. If higher levels of management don’t fully understand this factor, improvement processes tend not to receive the resources they need, be they financial, equipment or personnel.
Over time, they begin to be delayed and then forgotten and canceled.
4- Don’t automate processes
– What? Number of repairs? Sorry, we can’t keep note of this all the time, we have a production line to keep moving …
Contrary to some people’s view, process automation is not about replacing tasks performed by people with automated tasks.
In fact, the automation of processes encompasses several other features, such as system integration and the automatic collection of performance indicators in real time.
And this is a crucial point so that continuous improvement in business can actually take place continuously.
After the modeling and analysis of a process, followed by its improvement and redesign, only automation will allow the creation of control panels where an organization can track these KPIs. This will show whether or not they have optimized the processes performance.
Only thus, through the control of tasks, if you notice where the process performs less than expected, can you resume the cycle of continuous improvement in search of bottlenecks, delays, handoffs and other problems that need to be solved, so that you can optimize the process more and more.
Learn more in this article: What is a dashboard: everything you need to know in the blink of and eye
With HEFLO, cloud-based, BPM process modeling software , it’s possible to automate processes in an agile and intuitive way.
Check out this tutorial and learn more about it: