Managing Innovation and Continuous Improvement Name of the University Author

Running head: MANAGE INNOVATION AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Manage Innovation and Continuous Improvement
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

MANAGE INNOVATION AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT1
Table of Content
Introduction-...............................................................................................................................3
Part 1: A -Corus: Continuous Improvement as a Business Strategy..........................................3
Continuous improvement and the person involved in the process, their role in supporting
improvement..........................................................................................................................3
Type of culture Corus and vision planning helping to develop the culture...........................5
Analysing how achieving its KPI would help Corus to give its customer satisfaction..........5
Key benefits of CI in helping Corus to become more innovative and customer focussed
organization............................................................................................................................6
Part B: Case Study: Tata Steel: Ethics and Sustainability.........................................................7
Ethical Business Practices......................................................................................................7
Explaining how sustainable practice could help a business to compete................................7
Analysing why LCA is more accurate type of analysis than just looking at the carbon
footprint of the “usephase” of a material...............................................................................8
Evaluating the contribution of Tata steel to sustainable and ethical business practices........9
Task Assessment 2: Team Project............................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................13

MANAGE INNOVATION AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT2
Introduction-
This report provides a detailed analysis of how an organization can apply continuous
improvement strategies for keeping the operation in place. This report involves the analysis
of three different marketing aspects such as Continuous Improvement Strategy of Corus,
ethics and sustainability and incorporation of innovation of a new product. Continuous
Improvement (CI) is applied by many large organizations to speed up their operation and
reduce the waste in operation. Thus, the report show Corus can gain benefits from
Continuous Improvement strategy. Likewise, the report also show the impact of ethics and
sustainability in business.
Part 1: A -Corus: Continuous Improvement as a Business Strategy
Continuous improvement and the person involved in the process, their role in supporting
improvement
Continuous improvement is derived from the Japanese word “Kaizen” which is
particularly a technique for identifying opportunities for streamlining the overall work and
minimising the amount of waste in the operation1. This practice was first formed by the
popularity of lean/agile/Kaizen in manufacturing and business but it is now being used by the
thousands of business across the world. Furthermore, continuous improvement can be
considered as both formal and informal range of guidelines. Consequently, several business
now have paid attention to this process management- such as Kaizen. Under this Kaizen
method, continuous improvement remains as the primary focus.
1 Chen, J.C., Li, Y. and Shady, B.D., 2010. From value stream mapping toward a lean/sigma continuous
improvement process: an industrial case study. International Journal of Production Research, 48(4), pp.1069-
1086.

MANAGE INNOVATION AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT3
Figure 1: Continuous Improvement (CI) Process
Source: 2
Usually, the human resource department of the organization take the responsibility of
applying continuous improvement in business because CI could involve the supervisions of
manpower, machinery, finance and all these aspects of business are usually supervised by
thee human resource department of the organizations3. In the case of Corus, it is widely
known that HR department of the firm is highly effective because the organizations deals
with broad categories of business operation requiring financial investment, manpower, and
planning. Thus, the personnel involved in the HR department of the business can apply CI to
existing operation. For example, HR personnel at Corus needs to make a broad commitment
to avoid the “us and them” mentality. This means that HR needs to ensure that each of
2 Chen, J.C., Li, Y. and Shady, B.D., 2010. From value stream mapping toward a lean/sigma continuous
improvement process: an industrial case study. International Journal of Production Research, 48(4), pp.1069-
1086.
3 Intra, C. and Zahn, T., 2014. Transformation-waves–a brick for a powerful and holistic continuous
improvement process of a Lean production system. Procedia CIRP, 17, pp.582-587.