Understanding Performance Improvement

Whether you are using Six Sigma, or Lean etc, your improvement effort will reach some limit of performance, that for which you cannot seem to improve on. The pattern will follow the tradition learning curve where the gains you make will reach a plateau.

This is an indication that the current process you are using is only capable of reproducing this type of performance. That is, if you want further improvement you need to do something differently.  Applying basic brainstorming, cause and effect and Pareto analysis will lead you to some action. When you implement this change/action guess what happens?  Your performance gets worse! There is a good reason for this, it’s called learning. Because you have moved from one well established and known method to another less well established and known method you will experience problems. You need to persevere and push through this stage. By the way this stage is commonly called “the loser’s trap” because it’s quite easy to go back to the old ways and be satisfied with that. If you do this then you are putting a cap on your performance.