MT Magazine May/June 2025

Beyond Continuous Improvement

No matter what you manufacture — be it airplanes, automobiles, or amphibious assault vehicles — it may be time to rethink your approach, and not just in a minor way. BY GARY S. VASILASH CONTRIBUTING DIRECTOR For the most part, engineers and manufacturers focus on developing and producing things in a way that falls within the definition of “continuous improvement.” That is, they analyze the product being produced and look for ways to enhance it. Perhaps this means changing a feature or deploying a new material. But regardless of how the upgrade is achieved, it is still the same product, just upgraded. Similarly, people tend to make incremental improvements on the manufacturing floor, such as tweaking feeds and speeds in machining operations or reconfiguring layouts to minimize material handling. These are cases where existing processes are essentially augmented.