Putting your improvement into boxes (categorising it!)

There are various categories of improvement, perhaps the best known being "continuous improvement" (CI). CI is linked to modern quality management.

Quality management's three prongs:-
quality control
quality improvement
quality planning


Feigenbaum's four steps of quality control

Setting Quality standards
Appraising conformance to those standards
Acting when the standards are exceeded
Planning for improvements in the standards

Quality Gurus exist. Deming is one of them. Deming's 14 point plan for the achievement of Total Quality Management (TQM) focuses heavily on improvement (b1p33)

Continuous improvement is often referred to by the Japanese word Kaizen. (ref B822 again).

Examples of kaizen
Quality Circles
Suggestion Schemes

Other tools include benchmarking, traffic light schemes, kaikaku or breakthrough (radical improvement) and kairoy (improvement achieved through innovation and investment in new plant or systems).

Juran defined breakthrough as the following sequence for solving chronic problems:-

1. Convince others that a breakthrough is needed - that a change in quality level is desirable and feasible
2. Identify the vital few projects - determine which quality problem areas are most important
3. Organise for breakthrough in knowledge - define the organisational mechanisms for obtaining missing knowledge
4. Conduct the analysis - collect and analyse the facts that are required and recomment the action needed
5. Determine the effect of proposed changes on the people involved and find ways to overcome the resistance to change.
6. Take action to institute the changes
7. Institute controls to hold the new level

There are two types of innovation - incremental and radical (b822 again - adaptor/innovator).

Leach et al performed a study to examine the attributes of more successful major innovative companies. They are in box 1.4 p36 b1.

Problem? Opportunity? Problems/Improvement...

Two types of opportunity:-

Those that involve the creation of something new
Those that signal a chance to improve


Problem solving usually gets triggered by a perceived "below-normal" performance measure or similar.
Improvement usually means to try to move above the normal performance measure.

There tend to be few differences between methods/techniques for problem solving vs improvement.

"Simple" means the opposite of "complex". It does not mean "easy to solve".

Flood and Jackson (Creative Problem Solving 1991) :-

Simple Problems:-

• Small number of elements
• Few interactions between elements
• Attributes of elements are predetermined
• Interaction between elements is highly organisaed
• Well-defined laws govern behaviour
• No evolution over time
• Single set of goals
• Strong boundary

Complex Problems:-

• Large number of elements
• Many interactions between elements
• Attributes of elements are not predetermined
• Interaction between elements is loosely organised
• Ill-defined laws govern behaviour
• Evolve over time
• Complex set of goals
• Weak Boundary

It is important to consider the context of the problem - the terms goals and boundary help with this.

Flood and Jackson's three types of political/cultural problem contexts:-

• Unitary (common interests, compatible values/beliefs, agreed ends/means, participative decision making, agreed objectives)
• 
  
• Pluralist (compatibility of interest, some divergence of values/beliefs, compromise on ends/means possible, participative decision making, agreed objectives)
• 
  
• Coercive (no common interests, conflicting values/beliefs, no compromise on unagreed ends/means, coercive decision making, unagreed objectives)

Ackoff's "messes vs problems" (see also B822)
Messes - dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other
Problems - extracted from messes by analysis. Atomic parts of messes. Individual problems may be "solved".

Ackoff says that the solutions to individual problems cannot be "added" to form a solution to a mess as those solutions will interact with themselves and the mess.

Rittel "wicked vs tame" (see also B822!)

Tame Problems - can be specified in a form agreed by the relevant parties ahead of the analysis
Wicked Problems - many alternative types and levels of explanation of the phenomena of concern, and the type of explanation determines the nature of the solution

Schon's metaphors (again B822!) - swamp vs high ground

swampy lowland - messy confusing problems defy technical solution where the important problems are
high ground - easier to solve less important problems

Ravetz - practical vs technical problems

Technical - those for which at the start of problem analysis there exists a clear function to be performed

Practical - those for which there is at least a basic general statement of purpose



Juran and Gryna's sporadic vs chronic

Sporadic - sudden adverse change in the status quo
Chronic - an adverse situation that has existed for a long time and remedied by changing the status quo


Ackoff says problems can be solved, resolved or dissolved:-

solved - decision maker selects those values of the controlled variables which maximise the value of the outcome
resolved - decision maker selects those values of the controlled variables that do not maximise the value of the outcome but produce an outcome that is good enough
dissolved - changing the calues so the choices available are no longer meaningful (eg the problem of which car to buy; deciding not to bother and take public transport instead)

Problem solving/improvement has traditionally been thought of as either

firefighting
planned


Quality movement started in Japan and was credited with turning around Japan's fortunes in the 60s/70s.


Problem solving can be approached

1. purely intuitively without careful reflection about the problem
2. through routine recourse to procedures used in the past
3. by adopting unquestioningly the solutions suggested by experts
4. by choosing at random
5. on the basis of systematic rational tought supported by relevant information (Gruenig and Kuehn, 2005)

It is argued that organisations that employ a structured approach to problem solving and improvement can gain better competitive advantage.

A structured approach:

- gives an identity and sense of ownership to the ps/i (problem solving/improvement) exercise
- legitimises the use of time on the activity
- imposes rigour
- makes better use of the available knowledge base
- facilitates group working
plus many more - block 1 p24

Problem solving: a background

It is important to be careful when trying to implement improvement in your organisation. Many management ideas end up as "innovation of the month", "flavour of the month" or "passing fad". Be wary of initiative fatigue. Take situational factors into account when considering problems and opportunities.

Problem solving can be approached "top down" or "bottom up".

 Carnegie said that quality is more important than cost. The American Society of Engineers (management consultants of their day) developed "scientific management".

- science not rule of thumb
- harmony, not discord
- cooperation, not individualism
- maximum output, in place of restricted output (Taylor 1911)

Taylor posited that management should not only decide what needed to be done but also how it should be done.

 This "top down" management continues to this day. From it has come time and motion studies, 6 sigma, and other approaches.

Henry Ford believed in continuous improvement. His view was that everyone should reserve "an open mind as to they way in which every job is being done." - all of management should be open to suggestion. (Ford and Crowther 1922)

The A.S.E viewed that there is a best way to do a job, identified through science, and undertaken by experts under management direction.

Ford viewed there is always a way to improve a job, and that everyone in the organisation can make suggestions for improvement.

Ford's way was forgotten though and Taylor's ways came to dominate, at least until Japanese methods became better known.

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If you have been reading this blog, you may be interested to know I used it for self reflection while studying B820 Strategy as part of the Open University's MBA course.

I passed B820 so it must have helped :)

I have since studied B822 and did not blog about that. I miss the blogginess. So I will blog about my next OU courses...