What does 'continual improvement' really mean?

Under competitive pressures and in a turbulent environment, there is no doubt that there is a continuing need for our organizations to improve. However good they are, they can do better. The need for improvement today has become the norm.

Any improvement is good, but although one-off improvements can provide step changes in productivity or performance, they do not in themselves deliver either ongoing productivity improvements or engagement of the workforce. This means we are better, but we are not continually getting better.

What is continual improvement?

Continual improvement is an essential ingredient of effective management systems.

However, although for many years continual improvement as a concept has appeared in management system standards, it is still not well defined nor consistently interpreted.

British Standard BS 8624:2019, Continual improvement – Methods for quantification – Guide, defines 'continual improvement' as ongoing improvement in performance or system infrastructure, achieved through repeated iterative application of improvement cycles.

There are many varying approaches to continual improvement in common use. BS 8624:2019 was developed by BSI Technical Committee MS/6 to help fill this gap and provide authoritative guidance on continual improvement and methods for its quantification. 

How can this standard help my organization?

Professor Tony Bendell, Chair of MS/6, said: 'Often in organizational management systems it is not clear to what extent real continual improvement is taking place.

'This document recognizes that continual improvement is a fundamental concept within ISO's high-level structure and is intrinsic to standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001. It is also of particular relevance to the work of BSI Technical Committee MS/6, charged with statistical methods in process improvement, since it underpins ISO 18404 for Lean and Six Sigma implementation, as well as the guidance standard ISO 13053. 

'The importance of continual improvement to an organization in terms of financial benefits, efficiency and effectiveness is understood, but the term itself is not well defined and there is hereto no adequate guidance as to what constitutes continual improvement. It is expected that the application of this new standard will enable a more rigorous and consistent interpretation and application of continual improvement across organizations and management system standards.'

Performing and managing continual improvement

A good implementation of continuous improvement requires effective leadership, clear vision with objectives, skills, appropriate resources and a well-thought-through approach. Objectives can be to achieve tangible results such as financial benefits, or intangible outcomes such as cultural change.

Before continual improvement is introduced into an organization, the organizational leadership needs to decide the scale and scope of the introduction.

A readiness assessment or organizational health check can be undertaken to determine the appropriate approach. These assessments would consider factors such as stakeholders and relationships, leadership and culture, strategy and purpose, systems and processes, capacity and capability, and communications and engagement. Pilot area(s) can be chosen and a roll-out plan determined. Generally, a model is chosen for the application of continual improvement to the activities.

Successful continual improvement can involve a merger of concepts from core improvement disciplines – for example a merger of DMAIC (Define – Measure – Analyse – Improve – Control), PDSA (Plan – Do – Study – Act) and project management. A continual improvement concept is cyclical/spiral in its nature, improving products or services towards an organization's vision and aims. This cyclical time frame is dependent on the nature of the vision, the size of its aims, the organization's readiness and the size of the organization.

Find out more

You can buy the standard through the BSI shop.   

This article was written by a guest industry author

Professor Tony Bendell is an international expert on continual improvement and excellence and chair of the BSI Technical Committee MS6 on statistical methods for process improvement. He is a leading advocate of the need to make our organisations future proof and author of the book 'Building Anti-Fragile Organisations: Risk, Opportunity and Governance in a Turbulent World' published by Gower in 2014 as well as numerous other books on improvement methods including the best-selling FT book 'Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage', available in 6 languages. Tony led the development on ISO 18404 concerned with management systems for Lean and Six Sigma improvement programs, and is involved in both certification of individual practitioners & belts under the standard and the training of certification body auditors for organisational certification.