Towards Sustainable Improvement Systems

Sammanfattning: Improvements in general and sustainable improvements in particular are problematic areas. The failure rate is high, figures in the vicinity of 70 percent are often mentioned, but why is it so difficult to achieve sustainable improvement systems? The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to understanding of the process and its mechanisms in creating a sustainable improvement system. The research questions are:What is the process for creating a sustainable improvement system?hat mechanisms influence the sustainability of improvement systems?How do the different mechanisms influence the sustainability of improvement systems?This dissertation is beyond searching for critical success factors for sustainable improvement systems but rather to identify and investigate mechanisms. Since mechanisms operate within a specific system they are by definition context dependent which critical success factors are not.The method used to fulfil the purpose was a series of case studies. In total 13 cases has been studied through interviews, participating in meetings, working in the organisation and shadowing.The research showed that there are major differences between different organisations in how they achieve a sustainable improvement system, despite this it was possible to a build a generic model. The model consists of three phases and three states.The phases are initiation-transition-sustain. Each phase has a certain state that need to be reached before the next phase can start. The first state which is the outcome of the first phase is that the employees regard the changes as beneficial for them. The second state is that the employees have changed their thinking and behaviour and the third state is that the improvement system is sustainable.