The Team Guide to Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement takes the reader through the practical steps of managing process and performance to customer needs. The team in an organization is like the family in a society. It is the fundamental building block of trust and competence in an organization. The ability of the team to learn, improve, and work in unity will determine the success of the entire organization. This workbook is a guide to building those teams and engaging them in continuous improvement. Lean management and culture, derived from the Toyota Production System, is based on this ability of small work groups to solve problems, self-manage, and improve their work process. The foundation of lean culture is the front line work team and management teams. As companies attempt to follow the efficiency of lean companies, they often focus on the technical things and bypass the hard part - the culture of the organization. At the heart of that social system is the team, both at the front line level and at all levels of management. This workbook presents the most essential skills of effective teams through an action-learning model the asks team to not just learn, but practice each skill in sequence and experience the results in improved performance. Only through this practice and positive reinforcement will those skills become habit.