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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Process Improvement

Continuous improvement

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

nounCore term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, continuous improvement means: An ongoing effort to make products, processes and services better through many small, regular changes rather than one big change. Often shortened to CI.

In Turkish: sürekli iyileştirme, sürekli gelişim

How it is used

Used as a goal, a culture and a job title (continuous improvement engineer, CI manager). Companies build a culture of continuous improvement and run CI projects. ISO 9001 also asks organizations to show improvement over time.

Example sentences

  1. Our continuous improvement team collected 340 ideas from operators last year.

  2. Continuous improvement is not a project with an end date; it's how we work every day.

Common collocations

  • culture of continuous improvement
  • continuous improvement engineer
  • continuous improvement project
  • drive continuous improvement
  • kaizenA Japanese word for 'change for the better', used for small, steady improvements made by everyone, and for a short, focused improvement event.
  • PDCA cycleA four-step improvement loop: Plan a change, Do it on a small scale, Check the results, then Act by making it standard or trying again.
  • lean manufacturingA way of running production that aims to deliver what the customer needs with the least waste of time, material and effort, based on the Toyota Production System.
  • root cause analysisA structured way of finding the deepest reason for a problem, so that it can be fixed for good instead of only treating the symptoms. Often shortened to RCA.

More terms: Process Improvement

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