Good, Better and Best

The survivals of the companies rely on the ability to drive the continual improvement effort to increase quality and reduce costs. Such improvement requires the endless stream of innovation, which appears from systematic generation of creative ideas. This may benefit the organization through research, new product development, problem diagnosis, service delivery, and others. Furthermore, these ideas may come from all stakeholders’ inclusive engagement, and extended perspective and improved decision making quality. This resulted "of increase productivity" (producing more with less) with the goal to achieve competitive advantage.

Many successful companies including General Electric, United Technology Corporation and Honeywell changed from mass-production with high inventory to a leaner operation with low inventory. Furthermore, stocking inventory based on forecasted or even promised demand will lead to overproduction and spoilage and eventually failed to meet the customer expectation. In Toyota, workers are trained to stock limited amounts of each product and replenish the shelf regularly, based on customer needs and wants. Nevertheless, implementing this strategy can be challenging at times. Results from the survey indicate that aging and the high seniority hourly employee and poor leadership contributed to the central problem.

Like any innovation, lean is essentially about learning to be efficient and change the order of thing. It can be very rewarding, but also disruptive, risky and costly at the same time. This may potentially lead to negative influence, lack of follow-ups and deficiency in the product or service standard. Conversely, salaried employees perceived continual improvement very positively. Such improvement plan needs energy to overcome this inertia, and someone who is open to changes. Individual or group of people who possesses this attribute and ready to champion this effort will make change easy in an organization. Lean thinking people’s advocates to reduce or eliminate waste and continuously improving the product or service.

When a company paradigm is shift from old-school management to lean management, the company culture will change in many ways. Some important principles in this aspect are to focusing more on informal rather than formal controls. Otherwise, risk is at play if the organizational environment is too rigid or policy driven. Past literature reveals that organizational structured is influenced by the nature of tasks performed within the organization. In a way, the less program and more unknown tasks the better the flexibility around the structuring relationship. This is something fairly common with the foreign own organization but not in some part of Asia.

Furthermore, foreign owned organizations are more innovative and flexible than smaller organization. However, both groups show that lack of skill and generational attitude changes has determined more creative retention strategies. While the adoption of established strategies are crucial, employee turnover, mainly casual worker turnover, remains challenging and could affect customer satisfaction. Reviewing the past, present, and upcoming trends in the hospitality industry", will provide a reasonable idea. Training, competency development and service qualities are critical consideration in the future similarly to the past.

In today age, technology has changed the traditional approach in the workplace. Generational changed need attention such as how Generations X & Y perceived expectation on the new trend. Organizational success, therefore, call for a management process that ensures improvement drive growth in work performance. As such, continual improvement begins “with a strategic organizational viewpoint” to develop employees and drive improvement plan. However, leaders need to see the problem and define the vision and strategy for moving the organization forward. It is management that need to establish the overall process and accountable for the final decisions to be successful.

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