Wes,
I am reading through this thread because I have a question about a finding received concerning Management Review and wanted to make sure that my issue has not already been discussed. I wanted to nibble at the hook you threw out here. What is the subtle difference between Continuous Improvement and Continual Improvement? I looked in the Free Dictictionary and it has the number one definition for 'Continual' being "recurring regulary or frequently" and then the number two definition being "not interrupted; steady". Is your subtle difference the difference between the number one and number two definition? Just wondering?
Thanks,
Doug
Nice to see you are still with us, Doug. You had a period where we didn't see you with your regular comments. Mark is on the money here. The nuance in
my mind [often a scary place] is one I heard from Deming's own lips 20 or 25 years ago:
"You can do some things continuously - burn a light bulb, run water in a tap, but even then, there is a limit - the water pump breaks, the water source dries up, the piping system to your faucet springs a leak, etc OR the filament in the bulb burns out, a storm knocks down the electric line, you don't pay the bill, etc.
"By continually improve, we mean you are always looking for ways to improve, but, eventually, you reach an optimum point where further improvement is technologically or financially impossible or impractical."
In my own lectures on the topic I say, "continuously implies a second to second improvement; continually implies making improvements in distinct plateaus or stages"
Consider the
Funnel Experiment - most folks trying to
continuously improve usually end up with results more like tampering with the natural variation in the funnel Experiment.
Control Charting and Design of Experiments techniques allow us to focus on those changes [improvements] which actually give a consistently better result.
A bastardized example of bad use of continuous is the way some folks run around like decapitated chickens trying to implement continuous Kaizen without considering the big picture and net result for the system. Neutron Jack at GE was infamous for touting all his "improvements" and "savings" of billions of dollars, but, because costs and problems were shifted from one sector to another, there never was a net result of billions to the NET EARNINGS of GE.
I believe what Wes is referring to is the following:
Continuous improvement by definition would involve always improving. Technically, this is impossible.
In practice, Quality Systems operate by Continual improvement, meaning a series of staggered changes that result (hopefully) in overall improvement over time.
With respect to the topic of this post, I think the relevance is that the purpose of Management Reviews should be identifying areas for improvement and acting on them. Putting aside debate on whether or not the auditor's NC should be appealed as per the standard, having null items in a MR record obviously does not help this goal of continual improvement...
Way to get back on track, Mark! Kudos. The point I think many of us tried to make is that EVERY management review in EVERY organization does not have to consider EVERY minute [tiny] aspect of the operation. Sometimes, it's just a waste of time to say and thus record something like,
"Our geographic area is in a long term drought so we did not discuss our plans for evacuation in the event of a flash flood because we believe last year's plans are still good and they are not scheduled for review until our property and liability and interrupted business insurance comes up for renewal next year."