Continuous improvement depends on people as well as processes

Article Summary

• Why investment in process improvement and automation also depends on people
• What research tells us about employee involvement, supervisor capability and the ability to sustain lean improvement
• How manufacturers can assess whether ideas are acted upon and learning moves reliably between teams, shifts and sites

In the manufacturing sector continuous improvement is part of everyday work.

When something is not working as it should the expectation is that people will find out why and improve it. Yet manufacturers are often less consistent in how they support the people doing the work. An operator may spot a problem long before it appears in the data but whether this knowledge leads anywhere often depends on what happens next.

The result is that what happens in practice can fall short of what is intended on paper. Manufacturers can be highly disciplined about improving production while leaving the people side highly dependent on individual managers and employees.

Automation does not remove the need for judgement but changes where this judgement is needed. As technology takes on more predictable activity people are left making more of the judgements that cannot easily be automated, particularly when something unexpected happens. This can make the supervisor’s role more demanding rather than less.

Manufacturers scrutinise the cost of machinery, software and integration before approving an investment. The same care needs to go into what the investment will mean for the people running the process and the supervisors expected to make it work.

What management adds to the production system

The Office for National Statistics has examined how management practices relate to productivity in British manufacturing. Its research found a significant relationship between more structured management practices and labour productivity. Technology, research and development and workforce skills all matter. But the ONS research makes another point clear: having these assets is not enough. What businesses get from them depends partly on how well the work is managed.

The wider ONS survey also shows how easily improvement can stall in practice. Almost nine in 10 businesses surveyed in 2023 had taken some action to improve management quality and 64% consulted employees about areas for improvement. Yet 36% said they had too little time to think about the changes required. Asking employees for ideas is one thing, creating enough space to consider what should change is harder.

What happens after an idea is raised

Most manufacturers already have formal ways for people to raise ideas. The problem often comes afterwards. Someone raises an idea but nothing seems to happen or nobody is quite sure who can make a decision about it. If this happens often enough people stop bothering to suggest things.

A 2024 systematic review of 193 peer-reviewed publications on human-related practices in lean manufacturing reached a similar conclusion. Lean transformation is harder to sustain when leadership, employee involvement and training are dealt with separately from changes to the production process.

Supervisors decide what happens next

Much depends on the immediate supervisor, who must decide what needs attention while dealing with everything else happening on the shift. On a difficult day putting an improvement issue aside may be entirely reasonable. The problem comes when immediate problems always take priority. The team gets very good at fixing today’s problem but never gets enough time to stop it happening again.

Investors in People’s cross-sector research, The Broken Ladder, found that 49% of employees thought realistic workloads and fewer administrative duties would make management roles more desirable and sustainable, while 38% selected continuing coaching or mentoring. Training matters but it only helps if supervisors have enough room in the job to use it. Someone who spends most of the shift firefighting will struggle to give recurring problems proper attention before they become urgent again.

New technology rarely makes the supervisor’s job simpler. Research from the Manufacturing Institute, Rockwell Automation and PTC found that data and digital capability were becoming more important, while communication, collaboration, critical thinking and problem-solving remained essential. When manufacturers introduce automation they also need to be clear about what will change for the people using it, including what they are expected to do when it produces an unexpected result. Better information achieves little if the people receiving it do not feel able to act.

A good fix should not stop with one shift

If one team finds a better way of doing something but it is not shared the improvement stops with them. One shift may find a more reliable way to handle a changeover while the next carries on as before because nobody explains what changed or why. Across several sites teams can end up solving problems that colleagues elsewhere have already solved.

Health and Safety Executive guidance on shift handover describes the accurate transfer of task-relevant information as essential to continuity. Effective handovers need time, two-way communication and information shaped around what the incoming team must understand. Although the guidance focuses on safe and effective working the principle also applies to improvement. A record of what happened can tell the next shift what was done without necessarily explaining why it worked — and this matters if other teams are expected to learn from it.

Look just as closely at how improvement works in practice

The We invest in people framework gives manufacturers a way to see whether these practices are consistent across the business. It looks at what happens to employee ideas in practice and whether managers give people enough authority to improve the way work is done. It also examines whether learning really changes what happens at work.

Policies may describe one approach while the day shift and night shift experience something quite different. Aggregate production data may not reveal that one shift has a supervisor who can make decisions and get the support they need while another relies on experienced people working around the system. Independent assessment can help expose those differences.

Manufacturing will continue to invest in automation, technology and process redesign. The return will depend partly on whether people can improve how the work gets done and whether managers have enough freedom to act on their ideas.

Manufacturers have spent decades reducing variation in production. The people doing the work deserve the same attention.

Continuous improvement people checklist

• Employee insight: Do operators and technicians have regular opportunities to raise problems and improvement ideas as part of normal work?
• Follow-through: Can employees see what happens to an idea after they raise it and why it has or has not progressed?
• Authority and support: Are supervisors clear about what they can act on themselves and able to get help quickly when they need wider approval or expertise?
• Supervisor capacity: Do supervisors have enough time to investigate recurring problems and develop their teams alongside immediate production demands?
• Learning transfer: Do useful improvements move beyond the team or shift where they started?
• Technology: Does the automation plan consider what will change for the people using the technology and what happens when it produces an unexpected result?
• Evidence: Does the business look for links between how people are involved and what happens to quality, reliability or productivity?

Explore further research and practical insight for manufacturing employers in the Investors in People Manufacturing hub.

Sources

1. 1.Office for National Statistics, Management practices and productivity in British manufacturing businesses. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/articles/experimentaldataonthemanagementpracticesofmanufacturingbusinessesingreatbritain/2018-04-06
2. 2.Office for National Statistics, Management practices in the UK: 2016 to 2023. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/productivitymeasures/bulletins/managementpracticesintheuk/2016to2023
3. 3.Nagamani Subramanian, M. Suresh and A. John William, Human-related lean practices for manufacturing SMEs’ lean transformation: a systematic literature review, Nankai Business Review International 15(3):478-501, October 2023. DOI:10.1108/NBRI-09-2022-0087
4. 4.The Manufacturing Institute, Rockwell Automation and PTC, Future Skill Needs in Manufacturing: A Deep Dive, 2022. https://themanufacturinginstitute.org/research/future-skill-needs-in-manufacturing-a-deep-dive/
5. 5.Health and Safety Executive, Shift handover and safety-critical communications. https://www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/topics/shift-handover.htm