A continuous improvement Franken-System can take many forms. Perhaps a company manages daily improvement with a physical Kaizen board that hangs on the wall, and gets employee ideas from a suggestion box. They send email updates about the board. They want a permanent record of the improvement work, so they take pictures of the notecards and save them in a shared file. They do the same with A3s and Value Stream Maps. They list and organize their improvements by file name in a spreadsheet, so they can search them later. They use calendar reminders to follow up on old improvements. They turn to project management software for larger initiatives and task management tools to manage little improvements. They have a wall in an office dedicated to tracking the impact of improvement ideas. Every department has its own method for capturing, implementing, measuring, and sharing improvements. Some have even gone so far as to solicit the help of the IT department in building a SharePoint site. In case you lost count, that’s over 15 different types of documentation for managing improvement work. These systems typically aren’t connected, or they’re connected in very manual and clunky ways. That is a Franken-System. Franken-Systems are created with the best intentions. Someone started using each of those methods in order to do something new, improve something old, or organize something more effectively. Sooner or later, though, they wake up to find that they’ve created a monster, and the longer this goes on, that monster starts to deteriorate. Over time, this Franken-System will be called on to handle more ideas and implement more and more improvements. In no time, the organization will not know who is participating and who is struggling. They won’t be able to respond quickly enough to new ideas, questions, or completed improvements; and very soon their employees’ enthusiasm starts to wane. Cross functional collaboration becomes a joke, and a lack of standardization makes reporting and measuring the impact of improvement impossible. The percentage of ideas actually implemented drops because they can’t keep up with the tasks, the data, the updates. Soon, everything falls apart, and they spend as much time bolting the monster back to together as they do actually improving their work. Check out this presentation to see 11 benefits of replacing your Franken-System with KaiNexus' continuous improvement software.

1. The Benefits of Replacing A
Continuous Improvement
Franken-System with

2. It’s easier to get more people
involved in improvement work when
they only have one system to learn.

3. Investing in a professional
software platform is much more
effective and less expensive than
developing something in-house.

4. Improved communication and
visibility improves follow up, which
increases the percentage of
improvements you can actually
implement.

5. Providing people with an easy way
to submit and work on their own
ideas makes them more likely to
come forward with opportunities
for improvement.

6. Better reporting, sharing, and
communication will engage more
people in continuous improvement.

7. Automated impact and engagement
reporting pull data on from small,
daily improvements on the front line
to large top-down initiatives.

8. KaiNexus does the legwork for you
to share ideas, ensuring each
improvement resonates throughout
the organization without adding to
your workload.

9. You’ll have more time to make
improvements as you spend less
time on administrative functions

10. Automated reminders make sure
nothing falls off the radar, so that
you can provide your staff with
timely feedback and never lose an
improvement idea.

11. Your executives will have high-level
visibility into the improvement work
your employees are doing, and can
drill down into the specifics on
anything they’re interested in.

12. You’ll be able to accurately evaluate
your employees and work areas
based on their participation and the
impact of their improvement work.