CIFMS

The implementation of a CIFMS (Continuous Improvement and Focused Monitoring System) offers companies "quick wins" benefits, which enable them to produce high quality products with shorter lead-time.

Continuous improvement, in regard to organizational quality and performance, focuses on improving customer satisfaction through continuous and incremental improvements to processes, including by removing unnecessary activities and variations. Quality is a never ending quest and Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) is a never ending effort to discover and eliminate the main causes of problems. It accomplishes this by using small-steps improvements, rather than implementing one huge improvement. The Japanese have a term for this called "kaizen" which involves everyone, from the hourly workers to top-management.

A CIFMS is not a general software application that can be readily used for any given manufacturing company, it is a uniquely designed system specifically tailored to a given company guided by a method. Therefore the most crucial process in developing and implementing an efficient CIFMS is selecting a design method which brings forth a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDM) problem with varied degrees of interdependencies among the decision components "(NB : the MCDM problem can be formulated so as to minimize the distance between a facility and a given set of points. The efficient points of this problem are candidates for optimal solutions to many location problems)."

A key principle of an effective Continuous Improvement and Focused Monitoring System is input and feedback from a diverse group of stakeholders.

Further reading

* cite book
title =A model for selecting a CIFMS design method
last =Hassan, Kikuo
first =Haleh, Nezu
publisher = Emerald Group Publishing Limited
date =2005
url =
id =ISSN 1741-038X
* cite book
title =Principles of Computer-Integrated Manufacturing
last =Waldner
first =Jean-Baptiste
publisher = John Wiley & Sons
date =1 edition (September, 1992)
url =http://www.amazon.com/dp/047193450X/
id =ISBN 047193450X