Never Stop Learning
So what is “Continuous Improvement”? (CI) In short, it is a business management system or philosophy aimed at producing ongoing incremental improvements throughout an organisation, especially in quality and efficiency.
When thinking about CI and reducing consumption/costs around your school its important to keep up the good work already in place and ensuring that old ‘bad habits’ don’t return. Technology moves at such a pace that within a year or 2 there will developments that can help you continue your efforts to reduce consumption.
Principals of Continuous Improvements
- Improvements are based on minor changes not just major changes or new concepts. – By approaching change in small steps, the CI model reduced the fear factor and increase improvement speed.
- Utilise your pupils/employees – the model relies heavily on pupils/employees because they can identify opportunities for improvement after all your employees are the ones closest to any issues.
- Progressive improvements are inexpensive to implement – this one speaks for itself really, as its a little and often principal, which often come about by improvements in technology. For example
- Pupils/employees take responsibility and have a sense of belonging through involvement – When people come up with their own ideas to improve their work or the work of a company, they begin to see the value in making changes. This gives pupils/employees a sense of empowerment.
- Improvement allows for reflection – continual feedback throughout the continuous improvement model is key. This is difficult to implement due to a lack of time however there are team collaboration channels like Microsoft Teams allow individuals to communicate easily and quickly to assigned groups.
- Improvement is measurable and potentially repeatable. – To recognise if a real achievement has been made it needs to be measured. This makes it clear if the change has been successful. Making continuous improvement part of company culture is a cost-effective approach to facing the business’s most difficult challenges