Environment

For Continuous improvement to be successfully implemented employees must be trained in skills and techniques as well as broader concepts of CI. For improvement in quality, costs, product development and service to be achieved close co-ordination between the various departments is essential. Therefore teamwork is the path of continuous improvement. “Teamwork as behaviour refers to activities involving the sharing of information about problems and co-operative working to solve them” (Kerrin and Oliver, 2002). Teamwork offers a number of advantages over the traditional fragmental work particularly in problem solving. “Snow-ball” effect, complementary skills and knowledge; and sharing information produce synergy effect upon the group performance. Mentioned earlier integrated product development requires teamwork and close co-operation of various departments within the organisation. Lawler et al, 1995 reported that within the “fortune” 1,000 companies 68 per cent of the employees were involved in teamwork.

Empowerment is another essential ingredient of CI programs. If workers have no control over their work , then there is no feeling of responsibility for the final outcome of their work and there is no motivation to improve anything. Oakland (2000) argues that people’s behaviour is determined largely by the roles they have to take up:

“If we create for them new responsibilities, team-roles and process driven environment a new situation will develop, one that will force their attention and work on the processes” .

“Quality at source” is a concept which permeates CI programs. It implies that every work station becomes a quality control point. Workers are responsible for controlling the quality of their work. Statistical Quality Control (SQC) then monitor the quality of parts produced by each workstation and produces comprehensive feedback for the management and workers.

It is obvious that for improvement processes to be efficient full commitment and involvement...