Continuous Improvement with Everest Software
Customer Complaint
Management and Corrective Action Tracking
Continuous improvement is a management approach related to organizational quality and performance with a focus on improving customer satisfaction through continuous and incremental improvements to products, services and processes including removing unnecessary activities and variations.
Among the most widely used tools for continuous improvement is a four-step quality modelthe plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle, also known as Deming Cycle or Shewhart Cycle:
Plan: Identify an opportunity and plan for change.Other widely used methods of continuous improvement such as Six Sigma, Lean, and Total Quality Management TQM emphasize employee involvement and teamwork; measuring and systematizing processes; and reducing variation, defects and cycle times.
Do: Implement the change on a small scale.
Check: Use data to analyze the results of the change and determine whether it made a difference.
Act: If the change was successful, implement it on a wider scale and continuously assess your results. If the change did not work, begin the cycle again.
Kaizen
As a function of customer complaint management, the improvement can be broken down between innovation and Kaizen. Innovation involves a drastic improvement in the existing process and requires large investments. Kaizen signifies small improvements as a result of coordinated continuous efforts by all employees.
Kaizen concentrates at improving the process rather than at achieving certain results. Such managerial attitudes and process thinking make a major difference in how an organization masters change and achieves improvements.
Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a set of practices originally developed by Motorola to systematically improve processes by eliminating defects. A defect is defined as nonconformity of a product or service to its specifications.
While the particulars of the methodology were originally formulated by Bill Smith at Motorola in 1986 under the leadership of Bob Galvin, Six Sigma was heavily inspired by six preceding decades of quality improvement methodologies such as Quality Control, TQM, and Zero Defects. Like its predecessors, Six Sigma asserts the following:
Continuous efforts to reduce variation in process outputs is key to business successThe term "Six Sigma" refers to the ability of highly capable processes to produce output within specification. In particular, processes that operate with six sigma quality produce at defect levels below 3.4 defects per (one) million opportunities (DPMO). Six Sigma's implicit goal is to improve all processes to that level of quality or better.
Manufacturing and business processes can be measured, analyzed, improved and controlled
Succeeding at achieving sustained quality improvement requires commitment from the entire organization, particularly from top-level management
As Six Sigma has evolved, there has been less emphasis on the literal definition of 3.4 DPMO, or counting defects in products and processes. Six Sigma is a business improvement methodology that focuses an organization on:
Understanding and managing customer requirementsAt the heart of the methodology is the DMAIC model for process improvement. DMAIC is commonly used by Six Sigma project teams and is an acronym for:
Aligning key business processes to achieve those requirements
Utilizing rigorous data analysis to minimize variation in those processes
Driving rapid and sustainable improvement to business processes
Define opportunitySix Sigma is a registered service mark and trademark of Motorola, Inc.
Measure performance
Analyze opportunity
Improve performance
Control performance
Related Links:
Motorola - What is Six Sigma?
http://www.motorola.com/content.jsp?globalObjectId=3088
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