Throughout history, people have developed methods and instruments to establish and improve the performance standards of their organizations and individuals. From the ancient Egyptians methods were developed with the desire to improve their systems.
Continuous improvement more than an approach or concept is a strategy, and as such constitutes a series of general programs of action and deployment of resources to achieve complete objectives, since the process must be progressive. It is not possible to go from darkness to light with a single jump.
Currently, the Business System is in an improvement process that in itself constitutes an improvement program, but to the extent that it is supported by approaches used in world practice, better results will be obtained.
This work includes considerations on some of the existing improvement programs such as: Benchmarking, Total Quality, Theory of Constraints, Permanent Program for the Improvement of Productivity and Reengineering.
KEY WORDS: Business Improvement / Improvement Programs.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AND QUALITY PROGRAMS
Throughout history there have been leaders who applied solutions that today could be perfectly accepted. However, the complexity of the current world has led experts in the most diverse branches to define theories, techniques, methods or concepts that can lead to success in Business Management.
Cuban companies have the urgent need to obtain an increasing production and with a relevant efficiency as a way of solving their current situation and insertion in the international market, for which a high degree of competitiveness is required, which requires the implementation of a continuous improvement process.
Each word in this term has a specific message. "Process" implies a related sequence of actions, of steps, and not just a set of ideas; "Improvement" means that this set of actions increases the profitability results of the company, based on variables that are appreciated by the market (quality, service, etc.) and that give a differential advantage to the company in relation to its competitors; "Continuous" implies that given the competitive environment where competitors make moves to gain a position in the market, the generation of advantages must be constant.
An improvement plan requires that a system be developed in the company that allows:
- Have skilled employees, trained to do the job well, to control defects, errors and perform different tasks or operations.
- Have motivated employees who put effort into their work, who seek to perform operations optimally and suggest improvements. Have employees with a willingness to change, capable and willing to adapt to new situations in the organization.
The application of the improvement methodology requires certain investments. It is possible and desirable to justify these investments in economic terms through the savings and increases in productivity that will be produced by the reduction of the manufacturing cycle.
Real progress in the company has only been made when the highest-ranking executive decides that he will personally lead the change. In this sense, there are different procedures aimed at focusing attention on the demands imposed on the process or function and achieving converting the requirements into technical specifications, and these are a defined work process. Some of these procedures will be described below.
Benchmarking
The first references of current benchmarking date back to the year 1979 when the Xerox Corporation adopted an approach in the United States similar to that of the Japanese in the first decade of 1950, by copying high consumption products, getting to know their deficiencies and developing alternatives of improvements at lower cost.
Various specialists have pointed out that becnhmarking is a natural evolution of concepts such as competitor and market analysis, quality improvement programs, total quality management and Japanese practices, it is something much more refined than a mere short-term data collection exercise, it is about proactive management.
The CEO of the Xerox Corporation defines benchmarking as the search for those best practices that will lead to a company's performance, a positive, proactive, structured process that leads to operations that change and eventually achieve superior performance and competitive advantage.. Establishing operational purposes based on best possible industry practices is a critical component in the success of any business.
Meanwhile, Michael J. Spendolini, conceptualizes it as a systematic and continuous process to evaluate the products, services and work processes of organizations that are recognized as representatives of best practices, with the purpose of making organizational improvements.
On the other hand, the American Productivity & Quality Center defines it as the process of identification, knowledge and adaptation of practices and procedures from organizations anywhere in the world, to help an organization improve its performance.
Benchmarking is a business comparative analysis technique that creates competition-emulation between companies or between work process teams. It is a systematic process of comparison with those that best perform any of the processes to be analyzed, based on the main indicators available, but above all by analyzing how they carry out the activities that make up the process and where they generate value and how we can adapt it in our process.
The phases of this process are five:
Planning: In this phase, the specific points are defined, in which it is necessary to make improvements and to which Benchmarking will be applied, the most competitive companies or organizations in the activity or activities on which it is going to be carried out are indicated and selected the study, developing a study plan in which the objective of data collection is determined.
Analysis: The necessary data is obtained in the companies or organizations on which the comparison will be carried out, carrying out a study of the data to know the strengths of the company and compare them with the internal data, the negative or positive differences are quantified current and projected in order to outline future actions and close the analysis cycle.
Integration: The improvement objectives to be achieved are set and an action plan is determined for each of them, establishing an internal process that allows the integration of the objectives, it is important to sensitize the staff at all levels of the company.
Action: Development and execution of the definitive action plan, continuous monitoring of the plan evaluating the improvement results and quantifying the contribution of these results to the operational plan.
Maturity: Reach the desired Leadership situation, definitive and full integration of Benchmarking in the Business Management process.
To conclude, it should be noted that for the process to be effective, it is necessary for the project to be assigned a single person responsible for all activities to coordinate and control the entire process.
Total quality
Its origins date back to 1949, when the Union of Japaneces Scientists an Engineers (JUSE) created a committee made up of different schools, engineers and officials concerned with improving productivity and increasing the quality of life. It is a philosophy that is characterized by preventing and, therefore, drastically reducing all non-quality costs and is based on principles, among which are customer orientation, continuous improvement and teamwork, it is also a strategy administrative within the quality movement that considers and interrelates technical, human and material aspects through a systems approach, integration, strategies and continuous improvement.
In recent times, the concept of total quality is having a growing acceptance because the system, regardless of having a global approach that contributes to obtaining the expected results and despite the fact that it requires substantial changes (sometimes drastic), in turn, it feeds on the following criteria (Business Horizon / No.2067):
- The customer demands quality.
The customer that we face in the market is an evolved customer, more informed, more attentive and rational in their choices, making them a more demanding consumer. That customer is not willing to tolerate a lack of quality, poor service and does not accept excuses. Total quality represents the only way not to lag behind the customer's requirements but, on the contrary, to continually arouse their curiosity, to capture their demands and to permanently increase their satisfaction.
- Quality pays off.
Quality is a source of wealth. Only companies that are characterized by the quality of their products and their services survive in the market, achieve notoriety and prosper.
- Total quality improves staff morale.
Where quality is poor, it is easy for frustration, conflict and confusion to develop. Loss of time, a lot of work and little satisfaction are generated, which in the long run leads to the loss of competitiveness, loss of personnel, etc. It aims to revalue the role of man in the company and bring out the unlimited resources that each human being has.
At present, new capabilities are added to the characteristics of the total quality programs of the first generation (Business Horizon / No.2067):
- Performing efficiency, that is, the ability to know how to manage objectives by priorities through organizational approaches and forms.
- Operational coherence as a fundamental management capacity for the lasting success of the company, which can only be achieved by defining and implementing reference policies and mechanisms that guarantee vertical and horizontal coherence. Mobilization towards an end as a superior organizational capacity.
The total quality model includes the following points:
- Customer satisfaction.
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- Leadership.Information and analysis.Quality assurance.Human resources.Strategic planning.Effects on the environment.Results.
Theory of Constraints (TOC).
It aims to develop a comprehensive management system for the company through the recognition and use of critical resources, with the aim of reducing inventories in process and reducing production times.
The system proposes philosophies and techniques, among the latter the fundamental one is the creation in the company of the figure of «JONAH», the person who will act as a catalyst for the company, not solving problems but asking the right questions, so that the The rest are able to recognize the problems by themselves and above all, be able to solve them, within the philosophies are: balancing the material flow with the market demand and discovering the bottlenecks or restrictions, ensuring that they become the focus of the entire organization.
The TOC contains a master plan based on forecasts, a master schedule based on confirmed orders, an aggregate planning and an operational plan, adapts the calculation of the master plan to the constraints presented by the constraint (bottleneck) and performs the aggregate calculation of the needs according to said plan, being able to use the MRP system for the calculation. It injects flexibility by reducing the number of data to be processed by reducing the number of possibilities of the master program, pretending to calculate the work of the constraint and planning the input of materials assuming that the rest of the operations will go by themselves.
It assumes that the economy of a company is dominated by two aspects: the resources it generates and the resources it uses. It has a philosophy of continuous improvement aimed at constraints and therefore periodized in what implies an improvement of the entire company, it requires a different mentality from managers and middle managers, it is not so demanding with the rest of the staff and can be perfectly harmonized with the rest of the culture of the company and the environment.
Permanent Productivity Improvement Program (PPMP).
In increasing the productivity of goods and services companies, the Permanent Productivity Improvement Program has a growing meaning, its objective is based on implementing change processes with the philosophy of continuous improvement in organizations that produce satisfiers.
The PPMP is a program of activities that, supported by a consistent methodology, guides the set of actions aimed at promoting the objective and subjective conditions that ensure the presence of the productive quality of the company.
The PPMP in your application must have the following characteristics:
- Involucrative: (participatory): The application of the PPMP implies in all its stages the active participation of all its workers and the direction of the organization and operational units, and the involvement actions must be permanent at each stage of application. This principle is unavoidable.
- Remuneration: Workers and managers must receive in all respects remuneration and benefits for its application, which satisfy needs; This feedback will allow to make their participation more effective, and therefore, their involvement. Permanent: The PPMP must be understood within the philosophy of continuous improvement and not a program to solve a particular problem, it must be cyclical, and in each cycle it must be adapted to new, more demanding states in the evaluation of productivity; With its application, a capacity for permanent change should be generated in the organization and in the operational unit. Preventive:It must tend in its essence to prevent problems, it will not only be a set of corrective actions once the problems are detected, to the extent that the same shop increasingly for prevention, its application will bring greater benefits. Adaptive: It must be based on the specific characteristics of the organization and its environment, based on this to adapt the stages and strategies to be followed in its application.
The PPMP consists of the following stages:
Stage 1. Involvement.
The objective of this stage is to achieve from the beginning and throughout the process, the commitment and active participation of all the workers involved from the top management to the operational level.
Stage 2. Diagnosis.
The diagnosis will imply the measurement of the results through productivity indicators (PI) on the one hand and inhibiting factors on the other, in order to see the influence of these factors on productivity.
Stage 3. Solution strategy.
It consists of collectively designing the global solution strategy for the diagnosed problems.
Stage 4. Instrumentation.
It consists of applying the solution strategy defined in the previous stage.
Stage 5. Evaluation and adjustment.
It is based on measuring (evaluating) the advances of the Instrumentation, measuring the IPs and assessing whether the desired states are reached in order to ensure real and sustained productivity. At this stage, a new application cycle of the PPMP will open with higher goals.
The term productivity used in the PPMP is considered by many authors differently: According to Heinz Weihrich productivity is the ratio between resources and results within a period with due consideration to quality. This concept implies effectiveness and efficiency of individual and organizational performance. Efficiency refers to the achievement of objectives and efficiency is the achievement of ends with the least amount of resources.
Productivity is also considered the key to business profitability. It is the result of how the processes for the production of goods or services are managed based on the implementation of innovations both in terms of products and their processes (Manufacture No.25 / 1997).
If you compare this definition with the traditional approach (outputs between inputs), you can find a big difference in results. It is necessary to establish those factors that affect productivity. The external ones can hardly be altered, while the internal ones are within the reach of managers.
By way of synthesis, it defines Productivity as the emergent quality of the production processes (of goods and services) that make them improve permanently and in all senses, that is, in an integral way (UPIICSA / Sept-Dec / 1993).
Given the above synthesis, the convergence of certain specific conditions is necessary. So for a process to improve, three things are required to happen simultaneously:
- Wanting to improve.
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- Being able to improve (includes Knowing how and Having with what) Act accordingly.
The "Wanting" to improve is directly related to the attitude of the workers involved in the design, which is the result of: the motivation and personality of each individual.
The "Power" to improve depends in turn on two conditions: "Knowing" how to improve and "Having" the necessary and sufficient means to improve.
The "Knowledge" refers to the knowledge, experience and ability of the worker, not only to perform their tasks well, but also to be able to improve them.
The "have" refers to having the necessary means: technology and raw materials. It is necessary for the company to have the appropriate technology, which should not necessarily be state-of-the-art - which generally ends up being underutilized -, nor for its level of deterioration and obsolescence to slow down efforts to improve productivity. The same happens with raw materials, because if the company takes the necessary care to guarantee its supply in the quantity and quality necessary throughout the production chain, efforts to improve productivity will be significantly facilitated.
The Having to equal the Saber and Will, has its essential dimensions through which the influence of the object is determined to diagnose on the results of the system
The "act accordingly" refers specifically to the role played by the management of the company, It is the managers who have the responsibility that the first four factors act accordingly, that is, in the quantities, qualities and with the necessary opportunity to make productivity emerge.
Reengineering
This philosophy was popularized in the 90s by the consultants Michael Hammer and James Champy, defining it as trying to optimize the organization's resources by putting them in coherence with the short, medium and long-term objectives that emanate from the Strategic plan of the company, normally aimed at satisfying the needs and demands of clients, in the most efficient and profitable way (Senior Management / No.194).
Reengineering starts from the new expectations of customers, who have to choose the widest range that has never been seen, who know what they want, and how much they are willing to pay for it, and how to obtain it in the right conditions, also part on the basis that advanced technologies radiate at a speed that barely gives time to appear on the market, when another is already out. It proposes to radically redesign the processes (Business Horizon / No.2068).
Reengineering tries to make you forget about the operation of your organization because everything is wrong and, therefore, start over with a new organization that starts from scratch (CETED / 1997).
It is based on two main considerations (UPIICSA / May-Agost / 1997):
- Maintain the growth of the nation based on industrial development and international trade, supported by technological innovation.
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- A new paradigm for the industrial manufacturing of the XXI century.
Reengineering has a five-phase methodology: the first is the analysis phase where the areas to be analyzed are identified, which will allow discovering opportunities for improvement of the entire company. The second (definition phase) is where the strategic plan of the company and the short and long-term objectives that arise from it must be perfectly understood, the work teams that will govern and carry out the project are also created, defining their objectives and components thereof.
In the development phase, the organization is prepared for change, training people for it, performance tests are carried out and new operating procedures are prepared. The implementation phase is characterized by the signing of the final procedures by all those involved, then the team members must expand the project throughout the organization. The last phase is the continuous improvement process, which will be based on the installation of a live and intelligent improvement process that will be achieved through the creation of maintenance teams for the processes and systems.
If it is assumed that Reengineering considers “starting with a new organization that starts from scratch”, it will be agreed in these cases that the changes or improvements are discrete and not continuous, that is, the improvement will take place by jumps in time, that will allow to temper the organization to the height of the best. However, if the changes are continuous, in time two organizations could reach the same point but, the one that arrives through continuous improvement arrives before, sets guidelines, gains in image and obtains a competitive advantage that eliminates or neutralizes the one that came by discrete jumps.
There are other improvement methodologies such as Kaisen, the Integral Model for Operations Management (IMON), the General Problem Solving Method, and others, but as in any menu, there is no correct selection; simply those options are taken that seem more appropriate to the company at the time, depending on the circumstances.
These and other improvement philosophies have been developed in the world, but unfortunately, the results obtained have been very varied: they range from great successes to great failures. This is not to say that some techniques work and others don't. The needs of the industry force to make modifications in the application of these, which sometimes distorts their true purpose. It is essential to use a methodology that guarantees the correct change towards real productivity.
Obstacles to improvements
There are several factors that prevent the expected results of the improvements. These factors usually emanate from people, whose wrong attitudes are the main causes. Some of them are listed below:
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- Passivity between senior executives and managers; Those who evade responsibilities. People who think that everything is fine and that there is no problem; They are satisfied with the status achieved and they lack understanding of important aspects. People who think that their company is the best. Let's say they are self-centered, people who think that the best and easiest way to do something is the one they know. People who trust their own and sufficient experience People who only think about themselves or their own division. People imbued with sectionalism People who have no ears for the opinions of others People who yearn to stand out, always thinking of themselves Discouragement, jealousy and envy People who do not see what is happening beyond their immediate surroundings. People who know nothing about other divisions,other companies, the outside world, or the world in general. People who continue to live in the Feudal past. These include "people dedicated solely to business affairs, managers and line workers without common sense, and doctrinal unionists."
When you want to put something new into practice, the main enemy of this effort will be within the company itself and within the person. If this enemy cannot be defeated, there will be no progress. As a comic strip character once said, "We have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us."
Everything new is not necessarily good and not everything good has to be new. The prophecy of the good and the novel sometimes makes people lose objectivity, leads to walking down the wrong paths, excites, motivates and leads to believe that everyone should know, leads to populism. Many times this conditions frustration because the path to choose has not been justified in relation to one's own conditions.
Productivity and Competitiveness are two terms without which today's manufacturing world cannot be understood. Competitiveness is the ability of a company to take possession of a part of the market, sustain itself over time and grow. It is measured in terms of market share.
The current criteria for evaluating competitiveness by the client are the following:
- Quality (C): Satisfy customer requirements consistently.
- Opportunity (O): Deliver on time in Quantity and Quality Price (P): Universal measure After Sales Service (S): Need for guarantees, attention after the sale for claims Technology (T): Security of permanence, support and response time Ecology (E): Conservation and care of nature.
With these bases it can be said that:
Competitiveness = f (C, O, P, S, T, E)
Let's make use of all these concepts and we will be on the path of continuous improvement towards an efficient, effective and competitive company.
BIBLIOGRAPHY :
- Aranas Pérez, Pilar. Criteria for technically and economically evaluating the application of the production management improvement system. Business Studies Magazine No. 85, 1996. Seeking continuous improvement. Applied Logistics Magazine No. 2, 1997. Cuba, Cuban Society of Logistics. Quality. Industry news. Manufacturing Magazine No. 26, August 1997, Andean Development Corporation (1990). Productivity and Quality: Consultant's Manual. New Times Editorial. Venezuela.Cuesta Fernández, Felix. Reengineering as a result of the globalization of the economy. Senior Management Magazine No. 194, July - August 1997. The impact of Total Quality on business results. Some evaluation and measurement problems. Management and Organization Magazine No. 17, January - February 1996.Espejel Pacheco, Arturo (1991).Guide for the installation of a permanent program to improve productivity. UPIICSA Magazine, Espejel Pacheco, Arturo (1993). Productivity as a spiral of continuous improvement. UPIICSA Magazine, Sept - Dec. Management Brochures Year I. 1997 CETED.Gálgano, Alberto. Total Quality as a tool to achieve business success. Horizonte Empresarial Magazine No. 2067, Feb 1996, González Vázquez, Encarnación. Benchmarking: Business culture for the XXI century. University of Vigo.Heinz, Heihrich. Administrative Excellence. Productivity through management by objectives. University of San Francisco. Jaén Coll, Fernando Gustavo. Globalization, Reengineering in the fair business. Horizonte Empresarial Magazine No. 2068, March 1996 Lozano G, Oscar. Theory of constraints. Productividad Magazine, October 1991. Martínez H, Rogelio A.Management in improvement processes. Productividad Magazine, October 1991. Reengineering in small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Japan. UPIICSA Magazine, May - August 1997 AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHIC SYNTHESIS: MSc. Ing. Marisol Pérez Campaña. Graduated in Industrial Engineering from the Central University of Las Villas, Cuba, 1986. Master in Production Management, Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Holguín «Oscar Lucero Moya», with 16 years of experience in teaching and research.Cuba, 1986. Master in Production Management, Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Holguín "Oscar Lucero Moya", with 16 years of experience in teaching and research.Cuba, 1986. Master in Production Management, Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Holguín "Oscar Lucero Moya", with 16 years of experience in teaching and research.
