Keywords: continuous improvement; Comprehensive management; Concurrent engineering; Process reengineering
First, integrated management of continuous improvement: beyond the current mainstream improvement practice
The so-called integrated management of continuous improvement is a dynamic management process based on the fact that most enterprises often implement multiple improvement projects at the same time to cope with the rapidly changing super competitive environment and enhance the overall competitive strength. By excavating the * * * and close relationship between the improvement projects to be implemented, a complementary and mutually promoting relationship is established between them, so as to break through the limitations of a single improvement activity and the shackles of some artificial divisions, give play to the advantages and synergistic effects of various continuous improvement activities, and finally ensure the overall effect of continuous improvement of enterprises is the best.
(A) Re-understanding of enterprise improvement practice
Since 1990s, continuous improvement has become an eternal theme for any enterprise to seek development. In order to adapt to the rapid changes in the competitive environment of enterprises and the increasingly fierce competition, innovative management ideas such as reengineering, total quality management, activity-based cost management, just-in-time management, time management, employee authorization, benchmarking, lean manufacturing and economic value analysis have become popular all over the world, and gradually become the mainstream of enterprise improvement practice. Regrettably, however, most enterprises did not achieve the expected success, and many efforts for continuous improvement ended in failure, which was confirmed again in the corresponding research conducted by Elizabeth Keating and others in 1999. So, are all kinds of improvement management methods unscientific, or are there problems in the implementation of continuous improvement projects? Obviously, if the improved method itself lacks efficiency and effectiveness, people can easily explain the above phenomenon, but the evidence from practice does not support this explanation. Hendricks (Hendricks? The empirical study made by K. et al. in 1996 further shows that companies that win quality awards often have higher returns to shareholders. Coincidentally, when Easton and Zaller studied the largest 65,438+0,000 listed companies in the United States in 1998, they also found that those companies that implemented well-designed quality improvement projects were obviously superior to their competitors in profitability, stock price and return on assets. At the same time, in the practice of continuous improvement of enterprises, even those enterprises that have successfully implemented some improvement projects have encountered a series of complex problems. For example, they find that it is not easy to just stick to the improvement projects that have been successfully implemented before; What is even more difficult to understand is that successful improvement projects sometimes reduce organizational performance, induce layoffs, reduce morale, and even collapse all efforts devoted to continuous improvement.
However, in sharp contrast to this, XYZ Company has achieved extraordinary success by trying a brand-new management thinking beyond the mainstream improvement practice-continuous improvement of integrated management, and its organizational performance has been continuously improved and its competitive strength has been significantly enhanced. Through the continuous improvement of the implementation of integrated management, not only the improvement projects such as activity-based cost accounting, electronic data exchange, process analysis chart, cross-functional flow chart, statistical process control and compression time management are continuously implemented, but also the synergistic effect between them is maximized. Therefore, the practice of continuous improvement of enterprises shows that both enterprises that encounter setbacks in the implementation of improvement activities and enterprises that have successfully implemented some improvement projects should try a brand-new method-continuous improvement integrated management to ensure the continuous success of improvement projects, create competitive advantages and enhance competitive strength.
(B) the inevitability and feasibility of implementing continuous improvement and integrated management
1. It is an objective requirement of modern enterprise competition to implement continuous improvement of integrated management. Under the impact of knowledge economy, information economy and network economy, modern enterprise competition has developed into a deep and all-round competition. It not only requires enterprises to accumulate more and deeper knowledge, skills and know-how in a planned way, so as to gradually cultivate and enhance their awareness and ability of rapid learning and continuous improvement, but also requires enterprises to deepen their understanding of competitors and enhance their ability to discover and acquire technology from other enterprises, so as to improve their existing competitive strategy. Breaking the original industry rules and operating procedures provides a direct basis and reference, so as to ultimately improve the performance index of the technology used, improve the input, output and business processes, quickly respond to market changes, and enhance the competitive advantage. This means that the improvement activities implemented by enterprises to enhance their competitive advantage must be continuous, not accidental or intermittent; It must be comprehensive, which can help to enhance the overall competitiveness of enterprises, rather than a single, partial, only serving a specific business field.
2. The implementation of integrated management of continuous improvement can overcome the inherent defects of specific improvement projects. The practice of enterprise improvement proves that any specific management improvement method must face the specific performance priorities determined by different strategies, all from a specific perspective, aiming at solving specific problems existing in specific departments in the organization. Therefore, although many improvement methods claim to be able to effectively reduce costs, improve services and increase customer value, each method has its inherent limitations, and it is entirely possible to lose its original efficiency or effect when applied in other departments of the organization, so that enterprises still have to face the challenge of selecting and integrating from too many improvement methods. Comparatively speaking, the implementation of integrated management of continuous improvement, observing from multiple angles, obtaining different opinions by different improvement means, and then establishing a certain relationship between various opinions, so that they support each other and complement each other, thus facilitating people to fundamentally solve problems and make choices. For example, after applying the improved method of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), enterprises often face the dilemma of "whether to replace manual labor with automation", which is likely to damage the efforts of continuous improvement. At the same time, although the "EDI" project can improve the insight and realize the improvement on the original basis, it also has the following shortcomings: ① customers often lack the necessary information system skills to implement EDI; ② It not only takes a lot of time, but also fails to provide necessary support for the transformation from "functional thinking" to "process thinking"; ③ It can't provide a clear outline for cross-functional roles, nor can it identify the possible impact of other functions or customer groups on specific processes. However, if we adopt the integrated management of continuous improvement and implement the "electronic data exchange project", supplemented by improvement projects such as process analysis and activity-based costing, enterprises can not only avoid the above limitations and improve the implementation effect of the improvement projects, but also fundamentally improve their business processes. Therefore, for the whole organization that needs improvement, a more effective method is to integrate multiple improvement methods that need to be implemented and are often cut off by people, and turn them into continuous and unified activities, that is, to implement integrated management of continuous improvement.
3. The implementation of comprehensive management of continuous improvement can produce great synergy. For any enterprise, there is not only a close interaction between various improved management methods and existing decision-making rules and organizational practices, but also a close interaction between each improved management method and other functions and processes in the enterprise, as well as customers, suppliers, competitors and capital markets of the enterprise. Although this relationship is quite subtle, it is these interactive relationships that have produced great synergy and unexpected positive effects in various improved management methods. For example, a successful integrated improvement project is conducive to focusing the enterprise's attention on the improvement potential and tools that can be used, and can produce efforts that can be transferred between different projects and devoted to different improvement projects; The technology learned to support one improvement project can still be used in other improvement projects, thus shortening the time needed to cultivate a certain ability and obtain the expected effect in other projects; In most cases, the accumulated knowledge in an improvement project helps to identify, cultivate and enhance the specific organizational elements and corresponding skills necessary for future improvement activities.
In fact, the reality of continuous improvement of enterprises at present is: on the one hand, almost no enterprises rely on one improvement method alone, and they generally implement multiple improvement projects at the same time through overlapping employees in overlapping key areas; On the other hand, improvement activities such as total quality management and strategic leverage often have an important impact on product development, pricing, human resources, inventory management and capital market. Therefore, it often happens that enterprises often implement a series of improvement projects in parallel. That is to say, even if the problems they aim to solve are different, these improvement methods will be linked through the efforts of employees, funds, information and the attention of senior managers. This means that in many cases, many enterprises have actually intentionally or unintentionally tried to continuously improve integrated management.
Second, the basis of integrated management: deeply analyze various improvement methods.
At first glance, there seems to be no connection between reengineering, total quality management, activity-based costing and other improvement methods, but after in-depth analysis, it will be found that any improvement method contains some common elements, such as the specific angle of determining methods and objectives, terminology, tools and technologies for analysis, tools and technologies for realizing changes, and so on. Therefore, it is entirely possible for us to take these same elements as the basis for integrating different improvement methods on the basis of in-depth understanding. Specifically, understanding the above four elements of an improved method has the following advantages: ① It can provide a basis for people to evaluate the applicability and success possibility of an improved method in a specific situation; ② Specific angles, terms and tools help managers to identify and determine specific problems, how to solve them and who will solve them; (3) help managers identify and determine the potential defects of specific improvement methods; ④ It can provide us with a relatively simple but effective method and an opportunity to link different improvement methods.
1. A specific angle or frame of reference. People can regard a specific angle or frame of reference of an improved method as an observation platform, so that managers can pay attention to the goal and its realization. For example, employee empowerment enables people to use their own judgment creatively, so it pays more attention to the role of employees; Activity-based costing determines the cost of output, so it pays more attention to the work that employees are engaged in and the cost of completing this work; JIT can reduce waste, delay and imbalance, so it emphasizes minimizing the impact of these factors on the organization (as shown in table 1). In this way, after clarifying the observation angles and concerns of various improved methods, people can understand the application fields and application values of various improved methods and establish some connections between them. At the same time, we can also find problems that people have never found before by improving the different observation angles of the method. However, it should be noted here that the success of a particular improved method in a certain field often makes people become too optimistic, and then unreasonably think that this method is a panacea for all diseases.
2. Special terms and conditions. Complementing the perspective of specific improvement methods is a set of mutually compatible terminology, which can facilitate communication and make others know about existing improvement opportunities. In this way, when using an improved method to determine and clarify the existing problems, understanding the special terms of this improved method becomes the core of the problem. Generally speaking, the terminology of improved methods is usually closely related to specific functional groups. For example, the operation manager is concerned about eliminating process problems, waste and bottlenecks in operation, so its terminology is related to the workshop, and it discusses operational issues such as material flow, mechanical layout, adjustment time and workers (as shown in table 1). Therefore, they understand the advantages of terminology, magazines, case studies, professional meetings and timely management, and tend to take timely management as a better improvement method. Accountants may prefer the activity-based costing method because it focuses on "costs and related activities" and uses accounting terms (as shown in table 1). In fact, activity-based costing management has become the first choice for continuous improvement in the accounting field. Therefore, in the practice of continuous improvement, if we can find out the relationship between the terms of different improvement methods and make employees of different functional groups learn, communicate and understand the terms of different improvement methods, we can clear the obstacles in understanding for the implementation of continuous improvement integrated management and lay the foundation for its successful implementation.
3. Analytical tools and techniques. When clarifying the existing problems and helping managers decide to implement an action plan, each improvement method should use specific analytical tools and techniques. Once the current environment is known, managers will then use these tools to determine the ideal state in the future, and the gap between reality and the future often means specific improvement opportunities, thus defining the direction of efforts and development space for implementing improvement activities. If we carefully observe the different analysis tools and technologies of various improved methods listed in table 1, we can easily find that there is a close relationship between the analysis tools and technologies of some improved methods. On the basis of understanding the terminology of various improvement methods, enterprises can achieve synergy on their respective analysis tools and technologies.
4. Tools and technologies for change. Once the manager determines the opportunity for improvement, he can further implement the improvement, but at this time, he often ignores the tools and technologies of change, which is a major reason for the failure of many improvement methods. In fact, if the improvement plan is not successfully implemented after the problem is identified, it is likely to cause huge losses. At least, the reputation and prestige of managers will be adversely affected if the expected improvement goals are determined without actually implementing the changes. This shows how important the tools and technologies for change are! In this case, if we can establish some connection with the tools used by various improvement methods when implementing continuous improvement integrated management, it will certainly make employees more flexible and comprehensive in solving problems and get twice the result with half the effort.
Iii. Suggestions and measures: Integrated management implementation mode based on "* * * tools"
From the above analysis, it can be seen that in order to effectively implement the integrated management of continuous improvement and create and use the same elements in various improvement methods, enterprises can not only conduct relatively extensive education and training for employees, but also determine tools and technologies that can be familiar with and used in many fields or have cross-cutting ability; We can not only create some identical organizational terms and enable different professional groups to exchange ideas, methods and tools, but also create cross-functional teams and enable them to learn from each other different ideas, terms and tools in their respective functional fields. But in addition to these basic work, in order to ensure the implementation effect of continuous improvement of integrated management methods, enterprises can also start from the perspective of various improvement methods and tools.
(A) the classification of different improvement methods
After managers understand the angles, terms and tools of different improvement methods and their relationships, it is possible to integrate various improvement methods. In fact, it is entirely possible for people to integrate them in a complementary way rather than mutually exclusive.
Up to now, despite the endless improvement methods, we can divide them into time-based improvement methods, process-based improvement methods, quality-based improvement methods, technology-based improvement methods, employee-based improvement methods and activity-based improvement methods according to the same perspective and similar terms and tools, and within each family, the relationship between various improvement methods is closer than that between families. For example, relatively speaking, methods such as timely management, compressed time management, product launch time management, rapid response, manufacturing design and supporting quality management are closely related and belong to the family of time-based improvement methods; ISO9000 standard, Japanese deming prize, statistical process control, written standard, experimental design and other methods suitable for internal quality are also closely related, belonging to the family of quality-based improvement methods; The series of activity-based improvement methods includes activity-based cost accounting, activity-based cost reduction management and process improvement management to determine product cost, customer cost and distribution channel cost. The improved method family based on technology includes information conversion, electronic data exchange, computer integrated manufacturing, ERP and so on. The family of process-based improvement methods includes business process reengineering, process analysis diagram, benchmarking, best practices and so on. The family of employee-based improvement methods includes employee empowerment, learning organization, skill salary system, self-directed work team and so on.
(b) Establish the relationship between improvement methods within and between families.
After the above classification process, it is not difficult for people to find the connection between various improvement methods within each family. Take the relationship between various methods in the time-based improved method family as an example. Although different time methods use slightly different terms to describe problems, they are all related to time.
But relatively speaking, the transition between different families is relatively difficult. However, because some methods use the same improvement tools, there must be a very close relationship between them (as shown in Table 2). For example, attribute costing can be used for activity-based, process-based and quality-based improvement methods. In fact, according to this feature, Johnson & Johnson Medical Company has successfully achieved a variety of improved integrated management. At first, the company tried to implement the activity-based cost accounting method, but because the operation manager didn't understand how this improved method helped them, he regarded it as a typical accounting project, and the related efforts ended in failure. At the same time, the total quality management method promoted by the company has not been recognized by all employees because the operation manager can't identify its benefits. However, Johnson & Johnson Medical Company successfully turned its attention to process improvement by introducing characteristic cost accounting, and showed the above two improvement methods and their respective advantages and limitations in a language that the operation manager could understand, which made the operation manager find that it is of great value to obtain activity-based costing accounting information before trying to implement total quality management, and finally led the enterprise to success. In addition, tools such as process classification planning can also realize the successful conversion between activity-based improvement methods and process-based and quality-based improvement methods, or combine the results they can obtain closely to obtain huge benefits. For example, Pennzoil company organically combines activity-based costing with process reengineering by using process classification plan. By using process classification plan, companies can use activity-based cost information to identify high-yield areas that need to be redesigned. Therefore, starting from the tools used with * * * will help people to understand and apply other methods, thus providing more effective analysis angles, analysis skills and related information than relying solely on an improved method.
It can be seen that all kinds of tools can be the key elements to establish the relationship between different improvement methods. Based on this idea, when a new method appears or a new improved method is to be adopted, managers should first try to find a family with certain characteristics, and then determine some tools that may be used to realize the integrated management of various improved methods. In fact, it is these tools that constitute the premise of integrating various improvement methods and the "fulcrum" of exerting their leverage. For example, a flow chart or process analysis chart can be used to improve methods based on activities, processes, quality and time: a basic process analysis chart can determine a series of steps to transform raw materials into products; If the cycle analysis method is used again, we can further know the time required to produce the product, and understand and eliminate any factors that cause the delay; If activity-based costing and activity analysis are carried out again, the cost information of each step can be further obtained, which provides a basis for determining high-cost activities to be reduced and finding processes that can be cancelled, simplified or automated; If supplemented by quality-based improvement methods, we can reveal the information related to the existing deviations and the reasons for these deviations, thus shifting our attention to understanding and eliminating these factors that prolong the production cycle and increase costs. In this way, managers can understand the process from many different angles, make different angles complement each other, form a complete understanding of the process, and finally design various improvement measures to overcome most of the existing problems.
(C) select the appropriate combination of improvement methods
After completing the above work, the next task of managers is to choose a set of methods suitable for the current situation of enterprises from many improvement methods. At this time, they should not only evaluate the improvement methods currently used by functional groups, understand the characteristics of tools used by these methods, and try to use them in combination with related tools, but also integrate various improvement methods to design more effective solutions that are supported by employees in all fields. At the same time, managers must also consider the following issues: ① improve the team's attitude towards the focus or angle of an improvement method; ② Improve the team's understanding of the terminology of this method; ③ Improve the team's familiarity with the method and tools or the training speed of the team.
On this basis, managers can choose improvement methods from the following three angles: ① Allow employees to choose the methods they are most familiar with. By investing in employees' knowledge and background, employees can pre-test their chosen methods and may produce successful improvement plans. However, this method has the following disadvantages: because only a few people in the organization can understand the terms used in each improvement method, different functional areas are likely to choose different methods. As a result, it is difficult to implement specific improvement plans when cross-functional changes are needed. ② Using customer identification to improve the method. This is the most active selection method, which needs to know exactly what kind of improvement customers want to make, the feedback information of customer needs, the existing delivery capacity related to these needs in the organization, and the transformation of customer needs and company performance into improvement opportunities. ③ Imitate the improvement efforts of competitors, etc. However, no matter how the top manager of the enterprise chooses the improvement method, he should ensure that he can establish some connection within the selected combination of improvement methods and form a mutually reinforcing and complementary relationship.
(D) the implementation of continuous improvement of integrated management recommendations
On the one hand, due to the low structural level of improvement activities, it is not easy to supervise through output, which requires managers to make "manager-driven" and "employee-driven" play a role at the same time. Among them, the former refers to providing training, giving support, recognizing the value of improvement, providing incentives and clarifying the necessity of improvement. The latter refers to a self-reinforcing feedback process, which consists of increasing job security, acknowledging the feasibility of the project, understanding and recognizing the value of improving the project, achieving the expected results, increasing investment in the project and achieving greater achievements. On the other hand, according to the research results of improvement theorists, employees engaged in specific jobs are experts who have the most relevant information, so they should be responsible for identifying improvement opportunities and implementing changes. The rationality behind this strategy is reflected in the following aspects: employees engaged in specific jobs have already understood the workflow, thus reducing the time for data collection and diagnosis; When employees make their own improvement plans, they show strong interest in implementation. At the same time, Deming pointed out in his theory called "production capacity chain" that the resources released by improving productivity should be reinvested in the efforts to seek greater improvement, thus forming self-reinforcing feedback conducive to continuous improvement. From a management point of view, efforts allocated to improvement can improve efficiency and process output, thus reducing production pressure and providing more improvement time. Those organizations that reinvest the gains from previous improvements in further improvement can often form stronger positive feedback, thus gaining greater gains in quality and efficiency, further improving the effectiveness of the improvement team in transforming the output into action plans and actual changes, and successfully realizing the continuity and integration of improvement. Finally, it is particularly important to emphasize that high-quality projects that can play a better role cannot be bought and sold like machines. Therefore, the ability to successfully implement continuous improvement integrated management can only be gradually cultivated through internal accumulation. Managers not only need to weigh the current and future performance levels, but also strive to ensure that the efforts to improve the project can be transformed from managers' actions to employees' enthusiasm and initiative, and flexibly adjust the combination of improvement tools when the improvement project is successful in order to strive for sustained benefits.
In short, managers must understand the improvement projects of enterprises as a continuous dynamic process in which multiple projects are launched at the same time, and implement integrated management of various continuous improvement activities. When implementing integrated management of continuous improvement, they don't have to restart the implementation of improvement plan. What they have to do is to try to integrate the existing improvement methods with other methods, and take this as a fulcrum, and supplement the improvement scheme currently being implemented by introducing other angles of analysis and implementing other improvement methods, so as to exert its leverage and synergy, make the whole improvement process a continuous improvement activity beyond a single functional effort, and improve the overall improvement effect and enhance the overall competitiveness of enterprises from a long-term perspective.