Improvement

James H. Burrill, 1/28/97

Today's text seems self-evident to me:
If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.
Anonymous
And, Peter Senge said:
A corporation cannot be "excellent" in the sense of having arrived at a permanent excellence; it is always in the state of practicing the disciplines of learning, of becoming better or worse.
Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday, 1980.
This is the thought behind "continuous improvement". As relates to our ISO 9000 efforts, the documented procedures that we have, or are developing, are not meant to be carved in stone. When a procedure has a problem, or could simply be improved, ISO 9000 demands that we change the procedure.

The reason the procedures are written down is not to make them permanent but simply to communicate what the "contract" is between those who follow the procedure and those who depend on the procedure being followed.


If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.
Anonymous

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