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Continous Improvement As A Business Strategy

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CONTINOUS IMPROVEMENT AS A BUSINESS STRATEGY
The case study focuses on Corus, Europe 's second largest steel manufacturing company and their efforts in following the path of Continuous Improvement to produce quality product in a timely manner by streamlining their processes and reducing the wastage of resources. Corus is a subsidiary of Tata Steel, one of world 's top ten steelmakers.
In their own words, Corus aspires to be the world 's steel industry benchmark for value creation and corporate citizenship. Corus is a leading supplier to most of the demanding markets around the world including construction, automotives, packaging, mechanical and electrical engineering, metal goods, and oil & gas. With innovation and continuous improvement …show more content…

What is Continuous Improvement?
Continuous improvement, with respect to organizational quality and performance, focuses on improving customer satisfaction through continuous and incremental improvement processes, removing or minimizing unnecessary activities and delays in product delivery and also minimizing defects in the products being delivered. Several organizations have gained a competitive edge by implementing Kaizen, commonly known as continuous improvement (CI).
The philosophy of Kaizen was spearheaded by Masaaki Imai, and is constituted of two words, kai which means ‘change ' and zen which means ‘good ' as well as ‘wisdom '. Hence we can conclude that Kaizen implies ‘changes for the better ' and covers all processes in an organization like Engineering, Information Technology, Finance, Procurement and Supply, Customer Service and Manufacturing.
CI can be initiated either at Top Management level or at Process level based on effective feedback system. The most important factor is that, all employees should be responsible to make improvements and must work together to identify the steps needed to improve the efficiency of the overall process, in an iterative manner. This requires thorough supervision, flexible work force and

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