by Brian McKay

Continuous improvement is about focusing on making constant improvements to your business. You should always be looking for better ways to do things in various areas of your business, from processes in your office to manufacturing. There are numerous continuous improvement models that you can consider.

Kaizen

Kaizen is a continuous improvement model that focuses on eliminating waste. When using Kaizen, everyone within the company is expected to help contribute ideas for improvement. This means that those who are best able to identify day-to-day problems are able to raise these issues and suggest how they could be fixed. There are two main elements, flow kaizen and process kaizen, to address how information and products flow through the company and small changes that can be made quickly.

Fail Fast, Fail Forward

This continuous improvement model is about making and learning from many mistakes, while pushing forward at all times. It accepts mistakes as part of the improvement process, although it focuses on the small changes you can make, not the big ideas. It gives permission to explore new ideas without fear.

Six Sigma

Six Sigma aims to minimize faults and defects so that processes run smoothly and the quality of outputs is maintained. It can be used to both create a new business process and make improvements to an existing one. Six Sigma also requires there to be certain roles within the organization, responsible for different parts of implementation. A range of tools for managing workflow and quality is used too.