Regardless of the sector in which it operates, any company or organisation may be involved in continuous improvement. Nevertheless, some companies have a particularly well-developed continuous improvement culture . Who are these champions? Here are the 10 best examples of continuous improvement in business.

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Amazon - The classic in continuous improvement examples

Despite the criticism of the company and its boss Jeff Bezos, it is hard to deny Amazon's dominance in the e-commerce sector. But how is the company a champion of continuous improvement?

Implementing a continuous improvement approach requires first of all communicating the company's ambitions in a transparent manner. Amazon has very officially set itself the goal of improving the customer experience. Within the company, continuous improvement revolves around this objective.

Ainsi, Jeff Bezos s’est fait connaître en mettant en place des méthodes d’amélioration continue traditionnelles. Parmi ces méthodes, par exemple, les managers doivent préparer des mémos synthétiques avant chaque réunion, sans aucun PowerPoint. De cette manière, chacun arrive en réunion avec les idées qu’il souhaite exposer. Chaque manager lit son mémo et écoute celui des autres, avant de passer aux discussions. Cette méthode est une manière de responsabiliser les collaborateurs en leur demandant de venir préparés aux réunions. Chaque réunion a ainsi un process et une structure clairs.

Google - Fast and efficient continuous improvement

Google is also a classic example of continuous improvement in business. It is obviously a highly competitive and innovative company with a culture of creativity. But one of the particularities of Google's continuous improvement approach is the speed with which they innovate. In fact, in addition to setting up processes, Google's teams put in place tools and methods to move forward rapidly in continuous improvement and innovation.

Google's method is based on the principle of OKR ( Objectives and Key Results). This involvesaligning the entire company with given objectives, defining indicators of success, and measuring this success. The objectives are of course related to the overall mission of the company. In this way, the employees can collectively measure the extent to which the objectives, and thus the mission of the company, are being achieved.

The corporate culture at Google is known to be very conducive to effective continuous improvement: a quick start to projects from the moment they are decided, strict and respected deadlines... In short, everything is put in place to ensure that innovation goes quickly.

Haier - Local autonomy for efficient continuous improvement

Haier is a Chinese household appliance brand that you may know. Its management model is the Rendanheyi.

Rendanheyi is about improving the motivation, entrepreneurial spirit and speed of execution of teams by removing the distance between employees and customers.

Indeed, in this model, each production site functions as a micro-company in its own right. So, rather than having certain functions centralised at headquarters and others spread across the production sites, each site has its own R&D, marketing and sales team. In this way, it is much easier to innovate locally. And local innovation means speed!

Each employee must therefore act as an entrepreneur within his or her local micro-enterprise, which is itself within the group.

Toyota - Quality consistency at the heart of the process

Toyota was inspired by Fordism, while recreating an extremely efficient model. The organisation of production at Toyota is based on 2 principles:

  • The production line stops as soon as a problem occurs, so that no damaged or faulty production can occur.
  • The Just-in-time principle: each item is only produced when a consumer request is made.

In this way, it is easier to control continuous improvement.

Tesla - Using data to drive continuous improvement

Like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk has made a name for himself in the field of continuous improvement. Because even if Tesla's methods have been controversial, the company applies the best continuous improvement processes.

As the business grows and demand explodes, a rigorous approach is essential. At Tesla, the entire continuous improvement process is data-driven. Without a doubt, Tesla is the leading technology company when it comes to data. Data is collected through various channels, such as the computers in the cars. As you can imagine, the data collected in this way is valuable for continuous improvement. Indeed, Tesla uses technology to create a virtuous circle between customer service and continuous improvement:

  • The company listens to its customers, who can bring up their questions and irritants.
  • Customers are therefore more committed to the brand.
  • Thanks to this feedback, the company recovers data that allows it to be better in terms of continuous improvement.

Fastcap - The most playful example of continuous improvement

Fastcap is a very innovative company that has developed its own continuous improvement method (called Lean in 2 seconds), based on 5 principles:

  • A daily meeting every morning
  • Knowing the points of waste
  • The 3S (sort, sweep, standardize)
  • Improve the process by 2 seconds per day
  • Short videos reporting on the 2 second daily improvements

The principle at Fastcap is to show that continuous improvement can be something simple. We need to take the complexity out of it and make it everyday.

It all starts with a daily meeting every morning - in fact, we do this at Beeshake! The purpose of this meeting is to pose problems and think about solutions. This search for solutions is actually part of the company's culture. Indeed, everyone is encouraged to ' fix what ails them', all the time. In short, Fastcap employees are true problem solvers.

Finally, Fastcap stands out for its engaging and simple video-based approach. Because the use of video makes it easy to share all the small improvements of everyday life. As you probably know, video is a powerful tool to capture and illustrate good practices, but also to create an esprit de corps within an international team.

Disney - A classic and effective continuous improvement scheme

The improvement approach used at Disney is a classic and is based on 4 pillars. In English, this method is called PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act):

  • Forecasting: observing and analysing the qualitative and quantitative results of actions
  • Doing: managing improvement projects
  • Measuring: measuring the results of improvement projects
  • Act: generalise the solution after a successful experiment

We can add a step: celebration and sharing! Indeed, it is very important to celebrate successes, in real time and during the major events that punctuate the life of the company.

What we learn from the best examples of continuous improvement

As you can see, in most of these examples, the culture of continuous improvement is based on the vision of a leader. This shows how importanttop management leadership is when it comes to implementing continuous improvement.

So here are 5 tips that we draw from the best examples of continuous improvement in business:

  • Share your vision, often!
  • Set up short and effective times, such as morning meetings
  • Allow your staff to spend time on problem solving
  • Ritualise continuous improvement with short, fun and engaging formats
  • Listen to your employees and customers to stay effective
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