Ensuring a new initiative ‘sticks’ is critical for sustained improvement.

Without taking sustainability steps and locking in the performance uplift, initiative benefits can potentially fade away as:

• Operators/staff might not have been properly briefed on the new way when the improvement was implemented;
• Operator/staff turnover (original team members move to other areas)
• It might be easier to do the old way…

Five sustainability steps that should be considered for implementation are:

• Define processes and ensure the new way of working is documented;
• Implement ‘error proofing’ if possible;
• Brief operators on the new way of working;
• Train operators if needed on the new process;
• Set-up and start process confirmations – based on the new processes.