Clause 8.5.1 Continual improvement

“Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.”

Thomas J. Peters (American Author and consultant, birth 1942) 

Each organization should continually seek to improve, rather than waiting for a problem to reveal opportunities for improvement. Potential improvements can range from short projects to long-term activities.

Examples are:

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  Sitting down with the most important suppliers in order to increase the effectiveness of the communication and to reduce non-conformance;


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  Making an action plan to reduce the reject from a certain type of machine;


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  Finding opportunities to reduce the delivery time.
  

Continual improvement should be based on all relevant information available. Audit results (8.2.2) and other data should be analysed (see 8.4) and compared with the quality policy (5.3) and objectives (5.4.1) so that corrective (8.5.2) and preventive (8.5.3) actions can be taken to ensure continual improvement.

Feedback should go to Management reviews (5.6) to enhancing this improvement process.

The difference between continuous and continual: