Create a continuous improvement culture
Establishing a continuous improvement culture is the main goal at the second CIMM level. The continuous improvement culture is about creating a culture where everyone is involved in the continuous improvement of the organization in a proactive and constructive way.
Within continuous improvement, Masaaki Imai’s Kaizen philosophy is commonly followed. The premise of continuous improvement is to create a bottom-up approach in which all employees on the “Gemba” are involved with the ongoing realization of small improvement projects, also called Kaizen projects or PDCA projects. The idea behind this is that by making a large number of small improvements with Kaizen, a big improvement is actually achieved.
A continuous improvement culture can be facilitated by organizing daily short stand-up meetings in which the progress of the production process is discussed and problems that stand in the way of meeting the goals for the day are identified. Action is then taken on this. The most commonly used roadmap for Kaizen projects is the PDCA cycle, which stands for Plan-Do-Check-Act.
