Continuous Improvement

A foundation concept of the Deming Quality process.

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Refer to

W. E. Deming

• Biographies
  • Statistician
    • http://www.amstat.org/about/statisticiansinhistory/index.cfm?fuseaction=biosinfo&BioID=4
  • Man from Wyoming
    • http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/w-edwards-deming
• Organizations
  • http://www.deming.org/
• Annual Prize
  • http://www.juse.or.jp/e/deming/
  • How and when established
    • http://www.juse.or.jp/e/deming/75/

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For additional information see: Various Deming concepts and processes

Continuous Improvement as applied by Deming is used to improve a Process and states that the individual implementing a flawed process is not responsible for the failures of that process, the process is.

Most recently, Continuous Improvement has been manipulated in such a manner as to "raise the performance bar" higher than an employee can reach, then terminating the employee for poor job performance.

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I would quibble with the wording above. Dr. Deming stated that the individual using a flawed process is not responsible for the failures of the process. He also stated the individuals responsible for implementing a process (i.e. upper management) are responsible for the results of the process and responsible for improving the process.

Note that Demming also said that processes needed to be measurable, repeatable, and in other ways consistent. Just because Manufacturing Engineering demonstrated that their process could produce the correct results one time under laboratory conditions does not make it a usable process. It isn't until the process can be demonstrated to produce consistent results in a production environment that it is considered a qualified process. Think ISO9001, etc.

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Anyway, ContinuousImprovement fits well with CategoryEnterpriseComputingConcerns.

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An interesting non-software view of ContinuousImprovement is KaiZen.

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CategoryProcess (we need this now)