Continuous improvement enabling competences: case studies in companies in the automotive sector and capital goods

Abstract

The current state of the art on continuous improvement takes into account that the organizational competences and behaviors are more important elements for continuous improvement sustainability than the technical aspect. This set of competences and behaviors, initially treated by Bessant and Caffyn in the 90s, essentially considers that companies must build an environment geared to ongoing learning. Thus, this paper aimed to analyze the development of competences that support the continuous improvement in two different production environments: the automotive and capital goods to order industry. A set of competences that is related to the practice of continuous improvement is raised based on a theoretical background, and through a qualitative approach, four companies of the two considered sectors are analyzed. The research results suggest that the researched automotive sector companies have higher level of employee engagement in continuous improvement programs compared to companies in the capital goods sector, which is justified by the strategy adopted by the them.

Keywords:
Continuous improvement; Competences; Learning; Automotive industry; Capital goods industry