Continual Improvement Process In Business

A continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process, is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek “incremental” improvement over time or “breakthrough” improvement all at once. Delivery processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility. Continuous improvement involves consistently striving to improve your products or service according to the highest standards. It is a process which, in the long term, achieves:

• Enhanced quality of service delivery
• Recognition of customers, both internal and external
• Simplified processes and procedures
• Customer focus
• Attitudinal change

Continual improvement is a long-term strategy to improve your business in terms of customer value and satisfaction, quality, speed to market, flexibility and reduced cost. Though there are short term strategies as well. A small business can grow if the resources are properly executed. If you fail to manage them well, the business may lose. Yet, many business owners resist and sabotage their rapid growth efforts by refusing to give up their operational roles. A business can be improved in various ways.

Professional Development is necessary to provide your customers extreme value by committing to learn continuously and study about the now trends in your field. By spending time in research you will definitely set yourself apart from your competition. Another fast way to grow is to provide your customers with high-quality products at the same price as your competitor. When you think of growing a business, quality matters. Providing value to customers is extremely important to form lasting business relationships.

One of the primary objectives of continual improvement strategies is to increase the skills and capabilities of all employees so they can effectively engage in problem solving at work. Refining processes at all levels is part of continual improvement. There are definite cultural implications of process of continual improvement. It need not follow process of constant innovation. Work culture and ethics of a company should be positive and flexible, with no radical approach, to obtain concrete results.

Causation and Correlation

Causation is the capacity of one variable to influence another. The first variable may bring the second into existence or may cause the incidence of the second variable to fluctuate. Correlation is a statistical measure (expressed as a number) that describes the size and direction of a relationship between two or more variables. A correlation between variables, however, does not automatically mean that the change in one variable is the cause of the change in the values of the other variable. The objective of much research or scientific analysis is to identify the extent to which one variable is related to another variable. Two variables are said to be positively correlated  if both increase and decrease together.

The relationship between demand and price is an example of causation as well as positive correlation. If they are negatively correlated then one increases when the other decreases and vice-versa. Supply is negatively correlated with price. When supply decreases without a corresponding demand decrease, prices increase. Correlation does not imply causation, just like, it is not necessary that if it the weather is cloudy it will rain, even though it becomes true if we reverse it. Which means if the two variables or quantities are correlated, does not necessarily mean that one is the direct cause of change in the other.

Understanding causation and correlation helps you make better business decisions and when applied correctly, correlation and causation analysis can be used in various business, economics, and marketing situations, to improve business performance and create future opportunities for advancement for both you and your company. Correlation does not imply causation, it is a quip that events or statistics that happen to coincide with each other are not necessarily causally related. The assumption of causation becomes wrong when the simple correlation is the only evidence, however a controlled experiment can prove causation.

The more changes in a system, the harder it is to establish causation. Most organisations change their major business systems infrequently. This makes sense. It is a major disruption to the business to find, acquire and implement business systems and it becomes difficult to correlate factors that can drastically affect the business if the system changes.

All skills need revising to take advantage of new technologies. New technologies become established, which encourage new firms to enter the industry with better products and cheaper ways of doing things. If this sounds interesting, contact HyperEffects, for a free consultation on the concept, now.