Benefits of Continuous Improvement Cells

Benefits of Continuous Improvement (CI) Cells is one of the research projects funded by Highways England (HE) as part of its research alliance with University of Huddersfield and a number of other academic institutions.  Highways England is the main public organisation responsible for the construction, maintenance and operation of England’s strategic highways network.

The project aims to understand and document the hard (quantitative) and soft (qualitative) benefits induced by the deployment of CI Cells in the highways supply chain. The CI cell is a small-group work improvement mechanism that is often used to put the kaizen (continuous improvement) principle in effect.

The research will be conducted through in-depth interviews, participant observation in the CI cell meetings, the CI cells’ performance record analysis in the highways supply chain and a comparative study against the CI cell practices in another large public organisation. Alongside documenting the benefits, the project will also present a set of suggestions to improve the current CI cells in Highway England.
 
Research Team
Professor Lauri Koskela
Professor Patricia Tzortzopoulos Fazenda
Dr. Algan Tezel