The Current Paradigms and Methodologies of Continuous Improvement

• Autor(a) principal: Filipe, João Nuno Oliveira
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/6115
• topic: Lean; Lean Seis Sigma; Melhoria Contínua; Qualidade; Seis Sigma; Teoria das Restrições; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Gestão Industrial

The purpose of this study is to present a complete overview of continuous improvement, which justifies its supreme importance to present-day organizations. A case is made why organizations should strive to improve continuously. By analyzing the history and evolution of quality and continuous improvement in specific, it becomes clearer how its concept developed and how today's most popular paradigms and methodologies came to be. Times of economic crisis triggered revolutions in this field and many organizations recovered and rose to the top thanks to their continuous improvement efforts. These paradigms and methodologies — namely Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints and Lean Six Sigma — are then dissected in order to understand what they consist of, their methods and tools, and their strengths and weaknesses. Through the comparison of the first three methodologies mentioned above, it is shown that neither can be classified as the best. All are effective, but it is up to the organization to find which better suits its strategy and needs. Lean Six Sigma, on the other hand, integrates two methodologies and thus has the potential to provide greater benefits for organizations, although it must still develop further toward an effective integration model. In similar fashion, other hybrid methodologies show signs of potential and therefore are believed to be the future of continuous improvement. A secondary purpose of this dissertation is to identify universal principles common to all continuous improvement paradigms and methodologies. These are rules or "commandments" that hold true for every organization and must be followed if a continuous improvement initiative is to be successful.