Discuss about the Continuous Improvement for Balanced Scorecard.
Continuous improvement is a process of providing ongoing efforts aimed at delivering better services, products and processes.
Continuous improvement is achieved through a well laid out plan, which provides the direction of progress as well as measure the achieved progress. the continues improvement plan helps in assessing the areas that need attention as well as provide a variety of options on the incremental efforts that can be made to improve the situation(Bakerjian, 2012).
A well-structured continuous improvement plan consists of four steps, mainly. Plan, do, study and act. Planning is the first step that explains how the improvements will take place. It contains details of various actions intended to achieve the improvements.
“Do” is the second step that involves implementing the plan or putting the plan into action. Study involves evaluating the progress of the implemented plan and noting the shortcomings of the plan and the areas that require changes. This step is mostly concerned with safety issues involving the adoption of the plan. When the plan has minimal negative impacts it is considered as favorable, on the other hand when it a lot of negative affects it is unfavorable.
“Act” is the last step that involves approving or going back to the drawing board. When the plan is favorable, the organization will consider implementing the plan to other departments. In the case study that is to be analyzed from Queensland government, the essay will elaborate on how the continuous improvement plan is necessary and the changes that the program requires (Adamson, 2017).
According to Swamidass et al, continuous improvement in organizations mostly focuses on time management and quality management that hope to increase the efficiency and effectiveness in work processes. Baghel defines continuous improvement as culture of sustained improvements by organization that targets the elimination of waste in all the systems of an organization Jegerson views continuous improvement as an initiative that increases the organization success and reduces failure. Continuous improvement is also known as kaizen a Japanese word that stands for sustained improvement for elimination of waste entirely in all the systems of an organization Kossof mentions that, total quality management is aimed at continuous improvement, by engaging the available knowledge and experience in the management level as well as the employee’s level. Kossof, further explains that the process of continuous improvement involves the entire organization members working together to realize the improvements without really making any capital investments. The improvements take place because of new technology or new technology that revolutionizes the way of doing things. huge improvements are realized due to small incremental improvements that have out to use various techniques and tools that are aimed at finding ways to reduce wastage fill variation gaps and pinpoint the sources of the problems. Kossof argues that for organizations to be able to compete effectively in the global economy, they to emphasize on continuous improvement that harbor total quality management (Fischer, 2016). TQM is aimed at reducing cost, reduced wastage, trimmed production lines and increased manufacturing speed. Effective continuous improvement progress according to Kossof can be realized by applying the continuous improvement methodologies known as the “six sigma” they include, lean production, balanced score card, total quality management, reengineering, quick response manufacturing and lean sigma (Hodgetts, 2011).
Lean production is the elimination of waste during production or manufacturing. Balanced score card refers to the strategic plan that is adopted y organization to align its activities alongside its vision. Lean sigma is the cooperation of the whole organization team to achieve improvements (Larson, 2013).
The initiative by the government to funds specialist homelessness services and complementary housing programs which work towards assisting homeless people to access housing to ensure. The program has taken a step further to ensure affordable housing is provided as well as proper lifestyle standards are maintained. To ensure the efficiency and effectiveness through the use of continuous improvement tools, the plan in place incorporates the following areas, engineering and construction, it telecom software, financial and business services as well as welfare domain. In engineering and construction, a series of set out guidelines are highlighted in the plan that is aimed to produce the best customer services to the homeless. Such guidelines include invitation process guidelines, information disclosure on the offer as well as alternative offers (Ross, 2017). In the telecom domain, the plan has shallowly touched on the subject. The domain is also crucial as it support the other four domains of the continuous improvement program. the it domain according to the plan seems to be given the back seat as the plan highlights that it is considered through a one off capital improvement fund. The financial and business domain is well catered for as it includes the plan on where the funds are to be obtained from, way in which additional funding can be made possible and the requirement from the supplier on financial grounds who wishes to engage in business with the program. The welfare domain is the last one which also is made possible through the realization of the other three domains (Rothwell and kazanas, 2009). Welfare will be brought about due to proper management of funds allocated in the program, where they ensure that all areas are properly financed. Proper innovation in construction will lead to proper housing as well as reduced cost of construction. proper security and welfare will be made possible by the facilitation of it telecom software domain that is to ensure proper security as well as proper storage of the data collected from other domains as well as the data from the implementation of the program. Continuous improvement in this case involves the implementation of measures that minimize the wastage of resources as well as enhance the service deliver (Sarkar, 2011). such measures are observed by the pooling of various disciplines knowledge, e.g. innovation that provides creative response to address the daily needs of homeless people, the responses are aimed at providing means for self-reliance upon which improvements are made to e ale to capture the entire population of the homeless people. The program is also engaged in social initiatives with organizations that are able to demonstrate commercial viability so that they can create social value within the homeless society (Singhal, 2017). Apart from the above mentioned initiatives the homeless settlement program has set aside capital improvements that aim at improving quality and variety of services. The services may include installation of extra security facilities such as fencing and cameras.
The program has put in place evaluation criteria that are set to evaluate the performance of the various stakeholders that are championing the homeless resettlement program. The criterion has put down several guidelines that are in line with the effort of treating the homeless with dignity (Sloan and Sloan, 2011).The guidelines in the innovation part highlights that, it should look forward to providing dignity to people experiencing homelessness, provide new ideas and improvements on existing service. The innovation should provide the capability to deliver as well as demonstrate a response to economic benefits to the homeless.
The planned program provides a structure that asks the involved stake holders to promptly act as soon as the budgeted fund is available. Apart from readiness the plan considers how the $ 2, 000, 0000 funds allocation is to r managed.
The plan outlines the arrangements of funding and its handling such as start-up money not being used to start up fund raising but used to fund programs that can drive fund raising. To ensure marginal benefits from service delivery, the plan includes a section that highlights the guidelines to be adhered to in order to realize the value of money; the guidelines state that the value to be offered by any particular organization may leverage extra outcomes from other services. A detailed budget ought to be provided by the supplier to show that it is sufficient to manage the proposed activity for resettling the homeless as well as how the supplier can respond to changes in sustaining the services beyond the initial funding (smallbusiness.chron.com, 2017).
The above plan details are structured in a way that they are ready to work with any part of the program that will arise first, however a well thought out plan should be undertaken in phases whereby the financial and business service domain is prioritized and given the first priority in that the sources of finance are identified, the required finance for the project is realized so that the plan can move to the next domain which is engineering and ruction the construction and engineering domain is to be considered the first one , this involves material suppliers as well as those supplying the labour force for the construction. The third domain is the telecom and software domain in which, part of it, like the software part should run parallel to the above domains as it helps in storage of data, testing of innovation models as well as show the progress of the project. The rest of the domain comes at the end of the project. The domain helps also in evaluation of the implemented project as it provides platforms upon which data is analysed.
The welfare domain is the bigger picture that all other domains are aligning to achieve. This domain is mostly involved with the lifestyle that the homeless people will get as a result of the implementation of the project. Therefore the domain comes last and also acts as a measure on the service delivery improvement.
The diagram above shows how the implementation of the plan ought to take place, it is evident that the telecom software domain acts as the base of the other domains as it is used to store data as well as provide communication platforms.
From the plan the program is set to proceed to the next step which is “do” this step involves implementing the plan, whereby a group of the homeless people are subjected to the implementation. The implementation at this stage is aimed to establish the viability of the plan as well as the various areas that may seem to develop unbearable obstacles. Also at this stage is where the homeless population get to reject the changes that are brought about by the plan (Tomas, 2011). The third step is the studying, evaluation or checking step, the step is usually focussed on evaluating the progress of the evaluation as well as making slight changes that increase the implementation. studying at this point considers the implementation as a pilot project upon which further research can be launched considering a particular subject, such as why are the homeless people; leaving for the streets while renting out the houses they have been settled in? This might prompt a research into what the homeless people hold dear or to what they regard to be a home (Search manufacturing erp, 2017).
The fourth step is the action step; this step is arrived at after considering all the outcomes and feedback that have come about from the implementation of the plan. This stage mostly has two options depending on the outcomes from step three, revise the faulty plan or implement the successful plan into other areas that have the homeless population. The revision of the plan is then again taken through the pdca (Plan, do, check and act). The successful continuous improvement plan is spread to other regions to aid the resettlement of the homeless people. The continuous improvement does not just stop at successful implementation but rather requires continuous evaluations which are determined at pinpointing areas that might require improvements or at times be outdated by technology (Balancedscorecard.org, 2017).
The continuous improvement plan requires an assessment of the program and identification of the areas that need continuous improvement. The next step is to lay down a detailed strategy on how the change will take place. Implementation stage follows which requires putting the plan into action. Monitoring the implementation process is the next stage, which identifies areas that need change as well as rally the involved stakeholders to minimize the resistance to change. Finally, putting up measures and conducting occasional evaluation is the last stage that ensures the continuation of continuous improvement.
Conclusion
A continuous improvement plan is tedious to structure leave alone implementing. The plan requires the opinions and concerns of all the stakeholders who will help actualize the plan. The planning process involves many details, aimed at making sure that chances of failure are minimized to the least. After the plan is in place, the second toughest stage is the implementation stage. The stage encounters a lot challenges including rejection by the targeted subjects who do not have the knowledge to understand the benefits that are brought about by the implementation of the plan. The best thing is that as the implementation goes on the subject get to comprehend and support the implementation. The housing program, funded by the Queensland government needs to embrace the use of continuous improvement plan in order to ensure that the services they are providing will be improving day by day. The Japanese word “kaizen” acknowledges that the improvement can be downwards that is from the management to employees or upwards from employees to management. in a similar manner, all the domains that are making the housing program successful that is engineering and construction, it telecom software, welfare, financial and business service, need to work together to realize the improvement of services. Just like the way Steve jobs worked to improve the communication media or the way, Toyota Company strives to produce an innovative automobile.
References
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Bennett, S. (2016). Continuous improvement in continuous quality control. clinical chemistry, 62(10), pp.1299-1301.
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Fischer, R. (2016). Continuous improvement. spie professional.
Hodgetts, R. (2011). Blueprints for continuous improvement. 1st ed. new york: ama membership publications division, American management association.
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Larson, A. (2013). Demystifying six sigma. 1st ed. new york: amacom.
Ross, W. (2017). Continuous improvement.1st ed. cirencester: management books 2000.
Rothwell, W. and Kazanas, H. (2009). building in-house leadership and management development programs. 1st ed. westport, conn.: quorum.
Sarkar, d. (2011).Eight deadly faux pas of continuous improvement. performance improvement, 50(8), pp.5-8.
Singhal, K. (2017). Pdca cycle. [online] iso9001-2008awareness.blogspot.co.ke. available at: https://iso9001-2008awareness.blogspot.co.ke/2014/04/pdca-cycle.html [accessed 2 feb. 2017].
Slideshare.net. (2017). Continuous improvement project. [online] available at: https://www.slideshare.net/darlenelebaste/continuous-improvement-project [accessed 2 feb. 2017].
Sloan, K. and Sloan, t. (2011).Dispersion of continuous improvement and its impact on continuous improvement. international journal of technology management, 55(1/2), p.43.
Smallbusiness.chron.com. (2017). Steps in the continuous improvement process. [online] available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/steps-continuous-improvement-process-4529.html [accessed 2 feb. 2017].
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searchmanufacturingerp. (2017). what is lean production? – definition from whatis.com. [online] available at: https://searchmanufacturingerp.techtarget.com/definition/lean-production [accessed 2 feb. 2017].
Walter Adamson. (2017). Apple’s success drdeming’s legacy – continuous improvement. [online] available at: https://www.walteradamson.com/2011/08/apple-deming-christensen-continuous-improvement.html [accessed 2 feb. 2017].
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