The Need for Continuous Improvement

As described in the previous chapter, Quality Management requires that measures of performance be established. These measures are intended to be used to monitor quality and improvement in performance. 

The very design of Quality Management systems is intended to guarantee continuous improvement. Many of the features discussed in the earlier chapters contribute to continuous improvement. This chapter summarizes these features and demonstrates how they relate and combine to provide continuous improvement. 

Quality Management approaches encourage a comprehensive review of a system. This comprehensive approach encourages the designers to question every aspect of a system. In this way, incremental improvements are quickly identified and by implementing new approaches dramatic improvement in performance can be achieved. 

Aspects of ISO 9000 that contribute to continuous improvement include  

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The competitive nature of the food and beverage industry and the need for continued improvements in cost-effective manufacturing have provided an impetus for companies to develop and use new bioseparation techniques at very large scales, for example, freeze-drying in coffee production and continuous centrifugation in brewing. 

A key issue for the successful future use of this strategy for data collection is the need for continuing improvements to software tools to allow metabolites to be identified, localized, and reported efficiently. 

In conclusion, it can be argued that one of the most significant challenges to the continuation of traditional scaling is the need for continued improvements in performance (e.g., in amidst other scaling consttaints, which are pri-... 

Modern management systems stress the need for continuous monitoring of defined systems and procedures for enforcement and improvement of quality systems. These should minimize immediately and eliminate ultimately the recurrence of simihir problems through preventive measures. 

You need an improvement system that causes improvement opportunities to be identified. Relying on chance encounters will not create the conditions needed for continuous improvement. The data that needs to be analyzed will be generated by a particular process and this process governed by particular documented procedures. By having already placed instructions in these procedures for certain data to be transmitted to your data analysts, you can cause opportunities to be identified. Other opportunities that are less dependent on product or process data may arise from the audit process and particular projects such as benchmarking, customer and supplier surveys. 

Remember that installing your PSM system will not happen overnight, and it probably won t happen perfectly. Try not to become impatient your hard work will pay off if you encourage feedback and recognize the need for continuous reinforcement—at all levels—of the importance of safety improvement. 

The continuous improvement of asset reliability, consistency, and capability, either mutually or simultaneously, is the basic objective of the engineering management strategy in order to reduce operation and maintenance costs and increase regulatory compliance. The foundation for continuous improvement is information, without which it is impossible to establish a rationale for change. This foundation must be established at the start of the project with the definition of the business need in measurable terms, i.e., performance criteria, without which there is no basis for design, testing, operation, maintenance, compliance, and consequently continuous improvement. 

Investigational Approaches. Despite the significant reduction in cancer recurrence and increased survival afforded with fluorouracil-based adjuvant chemotherapy, the results obtained thus far indicate need for continued improvement. Several strategies are underway, including protracted fluorouracil infusion, oral fluorinated pyrimidines, irinotecan, oxaliplatin, and immunotherapy-based therapies. ... 

Labor costs will continue to rise, heightening the need for cost improvement in product development, production, marketing and all other areas that affect profit margins. 

The recent analytical literature abounds with reports on the development of electrochemical, fiber optic, piezoelectric, and other sensors. Novel detection principles are frequently announced, and attainment of improved sensor quality in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, and lifetime are the goal of many established as well as newly formed research groups. The need for continuous monitoring of critical parameters in clinical chemistry, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, chemical, and nuclear industries, chemical warfare or environmental control is the driving force behind the sensor research. 

The need for continuing research to further elucidate basic physicochemical properties to clarify structure-function relationships is evident. Information drawn from studies of chemical and enzymatic modification of food proteins and improvement of methodology for obtaining accurate data will further the objective of better utilization of plant and animal proteins as important food ingredients. 

ISO 9001 2000 specifies requirements for a quality management system where an organization needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide product that meets requirements of customers and regulatory agencies. It also addresses customer satisfaction through the requirements for continual improvement and the prevention of nonconformities. 

Throughout this text, 1 have referred to published research in order to justify psychological principles or recommendations for intervention procedures. Information presented in this text is foxmded on rigorous evaluation, not common sense. Evaluation techniques used in published research is, indeed, more rigorous and complex in terms of reliability, validity, and statistical analysis than those needed for continuous improvement of real-world safety programs. The basic principles and issues presented in this chapter, however, are relevant to both researchers (seeking to contribute to professional scholarship) and practitioners (seeking continuous improvement of an intervention process). 

When prewash products were first introduced into the market, many products contained ethoxylated alcohols. With a need for continual improvement, prewash products have moved from using ethoxylated alcohols, hydrocarbons, and soap to using enzymes and noncommodity surfactants to microemulsions. 

Batch processes can be synthesized by first synthesizing a continuous process and then converting it to batch operation. A Gantt (time-event) diagram can be used to identify the scope for improved equipment utilization and the need for intermediate storage. 

Several periodicals devoted to ultrapurification and separations have been started. These include "Progress in Separation and Purification" Ed. (vol. 1) E.S. Perry, Wiley-lnterscience, New York, vols. 1-4, 1968-1971, and Separation and Purification Methods Ed. E.S.Perry and C.J.van Oss, Marcel Dekker, New York, vol. 1-, 1973-. Nevertheless, there still remains a broad area in which a general improvement in the level of purity of many compounds can be achieved by applying more or less conventional procedures. The need for a convenient source of information on methods of purifying available laboratory chemicals was indicated by the continuing demand for copies of this book even though it had been out of print for several years. 

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