Mini Company and Kaizen
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IJOPM 19,11
Continuous improvement and the mini-company concept
Jan de Leede and Jan Kees Looise
University of Twente, The Netherlands
Keywords Continuous improvement, Teamwork, Organizational design, Case studies, Kaizen Abstract The key issue of continuous improvement (CI) seems to be the problem of combining extensive employee involvement with market orientation and continuation of CI. In this article we review some existing organisational designs for CI on these three essential characteristics of CI. As an alternative to the shortcomings of current organisational designs for CI we present the mini-company concept, related to the sociotechnical concept of the self-managing team. The minicompany concept incorporates the three key issues: it has a self-propelling capacity for CI, involving everyone on the shop floor. A constant and market-oriented source for improvement is found in the clients and suppliers of the mini-company. Results of an in-depth case-study are presented, showing some strong effects of the mini-company concept.
1188
International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 19 No. 11, 1999, pp. 1188-1202. # MCB University Press, 0144-3577
Introduction Continuous improvement (CI) is viewed as vital in today's business environments. CI is one of the core strategies towards manufacturing excellence, as it appears, for example, within the context of ``world-class manufacturing'' (Schonberger, 1986; Schonberger, 1996) or ``total quality management'' (Hackman and Wageman, 1995). Furthermore, CI as a concept is nothing difficult to understand or new. Bessant and Caffyn (1997) define the concept as an organisation-wide `` process of focused and sustained incremental innovation Many tools and ''. techniques are developed to support these processes of incremental innovation. However, the difficulty lies within the consistent
IJOPM 19,11
Continuous improvement and the mini-company concept
Jan de Leede and Jan Kees Looise
University of Twente, The Netherlands
Keywords Continuous improvement, Teamwork, Organizational design, Case studies, Kaizen Abstract The key issue of continuous improvement (CI) seems to be the problem of combining extensive employee involvement with market orientation and continuation of CI. In this article we review some existing organisational designs for CI on these three essential characteristics of CI. As an alternative to the shortcomings of current organisational designs for CI we present the mini-company concept, related to the sociotechnical concept of the self-managing team. The minicompany concept incorporates the three key issues: it has a self-propelling capacity for CI, involving everyone on the shop floor. A constant and market-oriented source for improvement is found in the clients and suppliers of the mini-company. Results of an in-depth case-study are presented, showing some strong effects of the mini-company concept.
1188
International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 19 No. 11, 1999, pp. 1188-1202. # MCB University Press, 0144-3577
Introduction Continuous improvement (CI) is viewed as vital in today's business environments. CI is one of the core strategies towards manufacturing excellence, as it appears, for example, within the context of ``world-class manufacturing'' (Schonberger, 1986; Schonberger, 1996) or ``total quality management'' (Hackman and Wageman, 1995). Furthermore, CI as a concept is nothing difficult to understand or new. Bessant and Caffyn (1997) define the concept as an organisation-wide `` process of focused and sustained incremental innovation Many tools and ''. techniques are developed to support these processes of incremental innovation. However, the difficulty lies within the consistent