In the world of process improvement, what are five classes of activities that are included in all processes?

Here are the 5 key activities according to the Associates of Process Improvement website:

* Establishing and communicating the purpose of the organization

* Viewing the organization as a system

* Designing and managing a system for gathering information for improvement

* Conducting planning for improvement and integrating it with business planning

* Managing individual and team improvement activities

1. Create a constancy of purposal.

2. Quality management,  and focus on the customer.

3. focus on  your costs.

4. Become innovative and look at the overall process flow or system in terms of design.

5. Good training to improve your people with new skills bring about improvements. to keep your people productive and innovative.  

Process efficiency, especially in the name of quality, has been around for a long time. For example, back in1950 W. Edwards Deming spoke before Japanese business leaders, outlining a roadmap for total quality management. Deming’s roadmap consisted of fourteen key points:1. Create a constancy of purpose so that you are continuously improving your processes. This requires defining both short term and long term problems, allocating resources appropriately, and working to improve product and service design.2. Adopt a new philosophy of quality management, constant learning, embracing change and focus on the customer.3. Cease dependence on inspection as a means for ensuring quality. Instead, place much more reliance on statistical tools for assessing quality.4. Don’t award simply on lowest price. Change your focus from lowest initial costs to lowest overall costs in the long run, incorporating quality, sole source, relationships, and other factors.5. Search continuously to improve processes. Become innovative and look at the overall process flow or system in terms of design, inputs, materials, maintenance, supervision, automation, training, teams, waste, and other areas that generate innovation.6. Invest in great training to keep your people productive and innovative. New skills bring about improvements. Therefore, you must fuel this process by empowering your people to do their best.7. Institute leadership that goes beyond the numbers and instead, puts an emphasis on supporting and making sure people can execute. Leadership must be able to discern what’s important and what’s not to optimize how resources are applied.