ABSTRACT
Continuous Improvement strategies can be viewed as a means of overcoming past disenchantment with ‘flavour of the month’ programmes for improving the performance of organisations. Over recent decades, management has been offered a multitude of solutions to their organisation’s needs. These include Value Added Manufacturing, Just in Time manufacturing, Manufacturing Resource Planning, and Total Quality Control. The problem with many of these strategies is that they were viewed as plug-ins or add-ons to the organisation’s existing operations. Such strategies failed to achieve the desired results because they were not adequately integrated with the existing activities of the business. Implementing the strategies was viewed as a panacea, but the enabling mechanisms to allow such strategies to be successful were often ignored.
