Abstract
<p><strong>Purpose:</strong> This document describes a continuous improvement process assessment system (CIPAS). A continuous improvement process (CIP) was developed to progress through the levels of continuous improvement (CI) defined by Bessant, Caffyn and Gallagher (2001), and the CIPAS was developed to measure this evolution. The CIP and the CIPAS were tested in a mature industrial small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) cooperative company (Basque Country, Spain) that works in the capital goods sector.</p><p><strong>Methodology/Approach:</strong> The study was developed according to an ‘action research’ strategy (Coughlan and Coghlan, 2002) over a period of two years. The action research team includes the authors and managers of several areas of the studied company.</p><p><strong>Findings:</strong> The assessment identified critical elements and related routines for the effective execution of the CIP in this company. In addition, the evaluation system allowed for a visualisation of the company’s CI maturity level progression.</p><p><strong>Research Limitation/implication:</strong> The assessment system was designed in an ad hoc manner for this CIP and this industrial company, but it may be possible to adapt these to other types of companies by using the steps followed and indicators defined as an example.</p><p><strong>Originality/Value of paper:</strong> The CIPAS is used to identify the key CI elements, to measure the evolution of CI routines, and to identify a CI maturity level of the company in which the CIP is applied. It can be applied to any type of company and serves to define future actions for its evolution.</p>
Highlights
The results of implementing continuous improvement (CI) have been well documented in the literature (Bhuiyan and Baghel, 2005; Marin-Garcia, Pardo del Val and Martín, 2008; Singh and Singh, 2015)
The research was carried out in a single organisation or context, where the same process was replicated in multiple areas – each one considered a unit of analysis (UA) – to achieve a global understanding of the situation and the change caused in the organisation as a result of the changes carried out in each area
Like the continuous improvement process assessment system (CIPAS), the results are divided into three aspects: the evaluation of the maturity level, the evaluation of the CI routines and the evaluation of the key elements of the continuous improvement model (CIM)
Summary
The results of implementing continuous improvement (CI) have been well documented in the literature (Bhuiyan and Baghel, 2005; Marin-Garcia, Pardo del Val and Martín, 2008; Singh and Singh, 2015). In many cases, once CI techniques have been applied, the initial results are not maintained and become much less effective as time passes (Dale, 2015). For this reason, many authors insist that CI systems must be adapted to individual organisations (Singh and Singh, 2015). A continuous improvement process (CIP) was developed according to this model to define the steps and activities to follow to achieve this CI culture. To evaluate the evolution of CI organisational culture, the present study developed a continuous improvement process assessment system (CIPAS). The current paper presents the aforementioned work and how over a period of two years it was applied in an industrial small and medium sized enterprise (SME) company, here implementing the CIM to overcome the 2nd level and to establish the bases of the 3rd level of CI maturity
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