What do Toyota, the United States Marine Corps and Minority and Women’s Businesses (MWBEs) have in common? The answer is they have benefitted from continuous process improvement (CPI). The goal of this business approach is to create an organization in which every function and process performed is aligned and completed in a way that contributes to operational effectiveness in support of strategic goals.

CPI is not a start-and-stop or episodic approach. The improvements are embedded in the organization at every level and in every process with the goal of achieving efficiency and value-added benefits as a whole. Ultimately CPI offers companies a strategic approach for improving profitability and efficiency through cost containment, production controls, reliability, product and service improvements, and increased productivity. In other words, continuous process improvement raises the whole organizational platform for achieving quality.