Sustainability and Continuous Improvement

Running head: SUSTAINABILITY AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Sustainability and Continuous improvement
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SUSTAINABILITY AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT1
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Purpose and Background.................................................................................................................2
Concept of Continuous Improvement..............................................................................................3
Continuous Improvement Models and Theories..............................................................................3
Proposed solution.............................................................................................................................5
Continuous improvement strategies................................................................................................6
Key Performance Indicators............................................................................................................6
Implementation................................................................................................................................7
Communication plan........................................................................................................................7
Training and Resources...................................................................................................................8
Feedback and evaluation..................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

SUSTAINABILITY AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT2
Introduction
Sustainability is a key issue that separates a successful company from ones that are not
successful. The latter is an issue that not only helps the company adopting it, it also helps in
terms of gaining an advantage in terms of development of the environment. The Australian retail
industry is competitive in nature and it can be said that gaining efficiency in operation can be
achieved through continuous improvement in all the aspects of operations of the company (Ding
et al. 2014). It has been found that Coles Supermarkets have been able to gain an advantage in
operations through sustainability in operation and a cycle of continuous improvement. The
purpose of this paper is to help in gaining understanding regarding the Continuous improvement,
Models and theories explaining about the same, the evaluation of strategies from Coles, the
communication plan that the company has adopted and aspects such as the communication plan
that will help in terms of generation of ideas regarding continuous improvement through which
the company achieves sustainability in operations.
Purpose and Background
As mentioned before, the Australian retail industry is competitive in nature. As a result of
the same, the companies associated with the industry have to carry out activities with the help of
which one company can gain an advantage over the other while they are in operations. Hence,
catering to the needs of sustainability of the environment is an aspect with the help of which
Coles can gain competitive advantage in the market that they are operating in. Continuous
improvement is seen to be an aspect with the help of which the company aim to raise the
standards associated with the sustainable initiatives of the company which helps the company in
terms of catering to the needs of the environment and the diverse groups of stakeholders

SUSTAINABILITY AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT3
associated with the company (Clark, Silvester and Knowles 2013). The company has paid due
importance to continuous improvement as a result of which they have adopted the same into their
regime.
Concept of Continuous Improvement
The main rationale that characterises the concepts of Continuous improvement is that
even if the processes that are associated with the operations of a company are favourable in
nature, the latter can always be improved. The aim of the concept justifies the fact that regardless
of the stature of operations of a said aspect of an organisation, the process associated with the
same can be improved, which might lead to sustainability in operations of the company or
increased satisfaction of the consumer community or the achievement of better result as a result
of the improvement in processes of the organisation. The latter helps them in terms of gaining
competitive advantage in the industry that they are operating in. The concept was popularised
with the help of Kaizen: The key to Japan’s Competitive success, which was solely based on the
process of continuous improvement (Paraschivescu and COTÎRLEȚ 2015). After that the
concept started gaining popularity and it can be applied by following a process that is known as
the continuous improvement lifecycle. The lifecycle is the assimilation of steps such as
identification of the opportunity for development, planning for the opportunity of development,
execution of the taken plan and review of the information that has been taken through
monitoring.
Continuous Improvement Models and Theories
The topic of Continuous improvement is a concept that has been relevant and the topic of
discussion in global contexts (Hoeve, Jansen and Roodbol 2014). Thus, the topic has gained the