What is Business Improvement?
- reinatakata
- Aug 8
- 5 min read
Introducing 4 Key Points for Advancing Improvement
Companies engage in daily operations to provide products and services that customers desire. Recently, many companies are working on business improvement to respond more efficiently and quickly. In this context, how should business improvement be implemented? Some companies may need to reduce expenses, introduce new systems, or review their work flows. Today, we would like to explore this topic of business improvement.
What is Business Improvement?
Many people may be working on turning off lights during breaks or reusing copy paper as part of business improvement efforts. Power saving and cost reduction lead to expense reduction, making them easy to visualize and implement. Additionally, if you can execute the concept of eliminating "Muri, Muda, Mura" (overburden, waste, and inconsistency), which is part of the Toyota Production System, it can lead to cost reduction through shortened work hours.
However, business improvement is not just about reducing costs. As a concept that helps with business improvement, why not consider "QCD"? QCD consists of three elements: Quality improvement, Cost reduction, and Delivery time reduction (the time it takes to deliver products and services to customers). Improving quality, cost, and time to a better state constitutes business improvement efforts.
Purpose of Business Improvement
Quality Improvement and Cost Reduction
Expense reduction and operational reduction have the advantage of making direct cost cuts easier. However, if not carefully implemented, they may lead to decreased product and service quality or weakened competitiveness with other companies.
To prevent this, please also consider medium to long-term quality improvement and cost reduction in your business improvement efforts. Let's examine continuous improvements such as business systematization and introduction of new equipment and tools aimed at improving customer satisfaction and service functionality.
Productivity Improvement Through Efficiency
Productivity improvement and efficiency are concepts related to "time." Implementation can be achieved through methods such as business systematization, reviewing conventional approaches, and capital investment. If simple tasks can be simplified, the surplus time can be allocated to other operations.
For example, suppose a simple task that takes about 30 minutes per day can be shortened by 15 minutes through the introduction of a new system. While it's only 15 minutes per person, if there are 30 people in charge of this task, it amounts to a 450-minute reduction. With the freed-up time, you might be able to start new projects or review operations. System introduction requires temporary costs and effort to learn and share operations. However, in the long run, it helps create a better environment through comprehensive time reduction and operational simplification.
Improvement of Working Environment
Reducing work burden can also be considered a purpose of business improvement. For short-term burden reduction, employees' capabilities may be able to handle it to some extent. However, when considering continuity, reviewing the work content itself becomes necessary.
What's gaining attention as part of business improvement is the "visualization" of work content, and this visualization makes it easier to identify "Muri, Muda, Mura." An easy-to-understand example is whether work is concentrated in specific departments or employees. When the workload for each individual is unclear, situations may arise where supervisors assign unreasonable work to subordinates. This would result in work burden being concentrated on specific employees, making the workplace unable to efficiently handle work. By understanding inefficient areas such as employees under strain, wasteful processes, and workload inconsistencies among employees, and redistributing work accordingly, unreasonable tasks and work time inconsistencies can be improved. This can prevent delivery delays and quality deterioration.
Four Essential Elements for Business Improvement
We will introduce four important elements for advancing business improvement: "visualization," "prioritization," "manual creation," and "outsourcing." Depending on your company's challenges, some may not be applicable, but please use them as examples for reference.
Visualization
In business visualization, first identify what kind of work occurs in each department. At this time, it's good to check not only daily routine work but also irregular work that occurs. Even for sudden projects, thorough identification helps capture a clearer overall picture of operations and can be used for reliable improvement.
Also, if reducing the work burden of a specific department results in increased burden on other departments, the effect becomes limited. To achieve solid results, aim for visualization of the entire company. By visualizing the entire company, you can understand the connections and flow of work across departments, making it easier to improve productivity. For this purpose, it's also important to introduce new systems like ERP and utilize functions that enable centralized business management.
Once business identification through visualization is complete, organize by categories such as type, frequency, and difficulty level. This makes it easier to examine whether work is concentrated in specific areas and whether it's truly necessary work. Categorization also helps smoothly proceed with setting "priorities," which we'll introduce next.
Prioritization
Based on the information confirmed through visualization, please prioritize each task. This allows you to identify tasks that immediately require improvement plan consideration. Use this gathered information to help determine whether to "eliminate," "reduce," or "change" tasks for improvement, and approach business improvement with a broad perspective.
When considering improvement plans, please include evaluations such as improvement difficulty (cost, time, effort, etc.) and improvement effects (cost reduction, productivity improvement). For high-priority problems, even if one improvement measure doesn't work well, different approaches might lead to improvement.
Manual Creation
Manuals can be expected to reflect improved effects company-wide. They reduce inconsistencies among personnel and enable work time reduction and knowledge transfer. While manual creation requires significant time and effort, it's an initiative that can be used for identifying waste and after personnel changes. It might be good to thoroughly review long-standing work flows when creating manuals.
It should also be useful when creating checking systems for the work itself. You can expect effects in ensuring product and service quality, such as investigating whether unexpected work flows are being followed and discovering and preventing fraud.
Outsourcing
Consider outsourcing, which involves delegating work to external specialized vendors. Outsourcing work that doesn't easily contribute to performance is also effective as a business improvement measure. There are likely departments with employees who have long handled time-consuming data entry or tasks similar to miscellaneous work. If employees are occupied with such low-specialization work and cannot concentrate on core operations, there's a risk of decreased employee productivity. By incorporating outsourcing, you can focus on your company's core business and work utilizing the know-how accumulated within the organization.
Additionally, by requesting only what's needed when it's needed, it's possible to make personnel costs variable. Even if outsourced work disappears, there's no need to relocate personnel. Furthermore, it helps reduce time spent on employee benefits, severance pay, and time dedicated to hiring and training personnel.
Business Improvement Also Requires Execution and Continuity
Since business improvement is implemented according to each company's challenges, there isn't one correct form. Please check your company's current situation and consider which problems should be improved first.
Finally, what we want you to remember is that improvement is difficult with one-time proposals or short-term efforts. Consider improvement measures for problems, and if they work well, continue with sustainable initiatives. On the other hand, if they don't work well, review the factors and start working toward improvement again. Let's continuously work on business improvement and aim for a better corporate form.
