Continuous improvement manager

Job / role

Leads continuous improvement in a company or site and supports teams in finding, prioritising and carrying out small and large improvements. Known in Germany as KVP or CIP manager.

Description

A continuous improvement manager looks after the ongoing improvement of processes in a company or site. In Germany this is called KVP, kontinuierlicher Verbesserungsprozess, or CIP. The work includes running an idea system, supporting improvement events and projects, teaching methods such as PDCA, A3 problem solving and kaizen, and tracking the results.

The manager makes sure that ideas from employees are taken seriously, that the best ones are prioritised and finished, and that improvements become the new standard. The role works with production, quality and maintenance and often with the lean or operational excellence team. Typical measures are the number and speed of implemented improvements, savings and the participation of staff.

Related topics in brief

• Continuous improvement · Related to · Concept
  An ongoing effort to improve products, services or processes incrementally over time; applied here to cloud operations where monitoring signals trigger funded, owned actions.
• Kaizen · Related to · Concept
  A lean practice of small, practical improvements made close to the work, often run as short kaizen events or workshops by the people who run the process.
• PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) · Related to · Concept
  An iterative four-step improvement method (plan, do, check, act) used in lean and continuous improvement to test a change against expected results before making it standard.
• A3 problem solving · Related to · Concept
  A structured problem-solving method from lean that records background, current state, root cause, countermeasures and follow-up on a single sheet of paper, traditionally A3 size, to guide discussion and learning.

Experts and companies for this topic

Experts on related topics

• Mirko Peters · via Continuous improvement

Maintained by Mirko Peters (Microsoft MVP) · Last updated: 2026-11-11