CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN MANUFACTURING FIRMS - FINDINGS OF A SURVEY IN NEW-SOUTH-WALES

As in many industrialized nations, the manufacturing sector in Austral ia has been forced into rapid change in recent years due to the twin p ressures of rapid industry deregulation and increasing business global ization. These pressures have resulted in dramatic increases in compet ition in most market segments and industry rationalization in many pre viously protected industry sectors. Manufacturing companies that wish to survive and prosper into the new millennium will have to adopt flex ible strategies, leading-edge technologies and an acceptance of change across ali levels in the company workforce. One approach to counterac t these pressures being used successfully in many Japanese and Europea n companies is continuous improvement (CI), defined here as ''a compan y wide process of focused and continuous incremental innovation'' (Bes sant, 1994). As part of an international study examining CI in medium to large manufacturing firms, survey responses from 203 firms based in New South Wales, Australia, with turnovers greater than Aus $10 milli on, have been analysed in order to determine the level of CI implement ation and the tools and techniques used in such implementation. Genera l conclusions from the study suggest that while awareness of the impor tance and value of CI is widespread amongst these firms, implementatio n is frequently limited to manufacturing and operations areas; employe es below senior management level have little or no involvement in dire ction setting; quality improvement and cost reduction are by far the m ain drivers for CI activities; and adoption of specific tools and tech niques is generally limited to the basic problem-solving and process-a nalysis tools.