Continuous Quality Improvement: Implementation and Sustainability

Abstract: As the philosophy of doing business shift from sell what you can produce to produce what you can sell so do the customers’ specification continuously become a vital tool during product development process, hence increasing the volatility of the business environment. The objective of this thesis is to thoroughly review literature to be supported by cases why most companies fail in sustaining improvement programs then map out a pathway that will leads to successful implementation. A series of reasons were found which impedes the successful implementation of improvement programs which includes; management is unable to define the problem to be solve and the method of measurement, implementers choose wrong parameters for improvement, implementers sub-optimize or may not involve everyone that will be affected by the program, top management gives little or no attention to improvement programs and at times they may even loose focus, so many concurrent improvement programs are executed which will result to resource overloading, teams members most often lack data integrity, and teams members are often scared to try new ideas hence prohibiting the chances of innovation. To minimize this cankerworm, a number of steps has been mentioned. The steps were divided into two phases, the selection phase and the implementation. The selection process includes; defining the program, focus program on improving shareholders’ value and choose program base on a holistic perspective. The implementation phase includes; commitment of top management, prioritize projects, use critical chain project management to plan and execute project, lay emphasis on quality data, minimize the number of concurrent projects, encourage risk taking, and spend time and resources on value adding activities.