continuous improvement process

Digitization opens extensive opportunities to gather real time information, exchange them and use them for a variety of different purposes. In industry, the related developments are referred to as the transition to Industry 4.0. They relate to the workplace design as well as to the alignment of business strategies and the underlying business models.

Sustainability in lean production systems arises when the relevant lean principles are addressed by preferably all stakeholders in the context of permanent improvement processes. For this purpose a skills development of all employees is necessary, even for managers, as they convey the CIP position by their people skills and set an example. If this succeeds, improvement processes will develop into a sustainable learning process, which in turn serves as a self-reinforcing factor for the further development of staff skills. An approach to skills development and to the corresponding leadership system for improvement processes is presented and supported by preliminary results of an empirical study.

Organizational learning offers a good possibility for enterprises to compete with the dynamics of the market. Under certain conditions, process integrated education not only leads to process optimization in the firms, but also to the beginning of organizational learning. This is of great importance particularly to small and medium sized enterprises, since they normally lack appropriate structures.

Besides the product quality companies have now recognized the process quality as further potential for more economic efficiency within the production. Process-oriented measured values are required for CIP activities as well as for Six Sigma projects when it comes to the determination of improvement possibilities. A manufacturing execution system (MES) offers the information virtually at the push of a button. By means of this CIP activities and Six Sigma projects are accelerated and in addition more potential is discovered than without a systematic entry of the process influences by a MES.