Continuous Improvement Culture

A continuous improvement culture is a shared value system that promotes the belief that what is good enough today is not good enough for tomorrow.

Cultures do not change overnight. It takes time, patience, strong communication skills, and most importantly, trust between managers and their teams.

A continuous improvement culture starts with a strong Lean leadership team that actively seeks out opportunities to: reduce waste, improve flow through the value stream, and increase the focus on the customer.

This means:

• engaging people at all levels of an organization.
• understanding Lean’s side effects on front line employees.
• encouraging teams to offer ideas & use creativity to solve problems.
• requiring participation in kaizens and other improvement efforts.

Lean training is obviously an important part of creating a continuous improvement culture. But leaders of the very best, and most profitable, continuous improvement cultures understand that their employees’ job satisfaction is the key to maximizing their Lean success.