Setting up a continuous improvement culture is the most important objective at the second CIMM level. The continuous improvement culture goes about creating a culture in which everyone is involved in continuously improving the organization in a proactive and constructive way.
Within continuous improvement, the Kaizen philosophy of Masaaki Imai is often followed. The starting point for continuous improvement is the creation of a bottom-up approach in which all employees on the ‘Gemba’ are involved in the continuous realization of small improvement projects, also known as Kaizen or PDCA projects. The idea behind this is that by realizing a large number of small improvements with Kaizen, a big improvement is actually being achieved.
A continuous improvement culture can be facilitated by organizing daily short stand-up meetings. In these meetings, the progress of the production process is discussed and problems interfering with achieving objectives of that day are identified. Upon problems, action will be taken. The most common roadmap for Kaizen projects is the PDCA circle, which stands for Plan-Do-Check-Act.