Booth Associates - Process Improvement

Process Improvement

A Very Brief History

Continual process improvement has been talked about frequently over the last two decades. However, W. Edwards Deming taught continual process improvement to the Japanese starting as early as 1950. We are naive to think that process improvement began quite recently. In fact, the present-day approaches to process improvement, such as Kaizen, are natural outgrowths of Deming's work.

When correct principles are applied along with appropriate tools, process improvement is not only possible but well-documented in history for over 50 years. It works!

Why So Many Process Improvement Programs Fail

While there are many possible reasons why process improvement programs fail, four of the most frequent ones are:

The improvement team is not sufficiently familiar with the process being improved.
The process being improved is not stable.
Those attempting to improve the process lack the knowledge, skills, and tools required to do the job.
Management pulls the team off of the improvement project before the real benefits are obtained.

Of course, we could name others as well, but experience shows that if the above problems are eliminated, process improvement goes forward quite smoothly.

How Does Booth Associates Help with Process Improvement?

We work with your own staff to remove the effects of the above problems. Then we work with your employees to bring about true improvement to the process. During the time we are working on improvement projects, your staff will learn many approaches that will allow them to work on future projects either without our help or with greatly reduced help.

Of course, we also provide training to bring your employees up to a level where they can handle almost any process improvement project you may have.

You can contact us at Booth Associates.