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Improvement specialist

Improvement specialist

Business and administration

Level 5 - Higher Technical Occupation

Leading the deployment of improvement strategies.

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Reference: OCC0555

Status: assignment_turned_inApproved occupation

Average (median) salary: £43,888 per year

SOC 2020 code: 2431 Management consultants and business analysts

SOC 2020 sub unit groups:

  • 2431/01 Business analysts and consultants

Technical Education Products

ST0555:

Improvement specialist

(Level 5)

Approved for delivery

Employers involved in creating the standard:

BT Group Plc, Toyota Motor Manufacturing (UK) Ltd, Capella Associates, Chartered Quality Institute, International Automotive Components Group Ltd, Jaguar Land Rover Ltd, SAIC Motor UK Technical Centre Ltd, Capella Associates Ltd, Wincanton Plc, GLAS Business Solutions Ltd, develop-u, National Skills Academy for Food & Drink, Britvic Soft Drinks Ltd, 2 Sisters Food Group, Ricoh Europe Plc, TUI Group Plc, Gleeds Management Services Ltd, Royal Mail Group Ltd, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, nuvia Limited, Bee Lighting Ltd, Clevedon Fasteners Ltd, Stadco Ltd, Kraft Heinz Company, British Standards Institution, Morson International Ltd, Testlink Services Ltd, Rolls-Royce Controls and Data Services Ltd, Leonardo – Helicopter division

Summary

Improvement Specialists are responsible for leading the deployment of improvement strategy, for training others and for providing broad and deep technical expertise in advanced and complex Lean and Six Sigma, Project and Change Management principles and tools to enable identification and delivery of improvement opportunities aligned to key business goals. Improvement Specialists typically report to Improvement Leaders who develop the improvement strategy and governance processes, and who provide technical guidance on advanced analysis. Improvement Specialists manage (directly and/or matrix) Improvement Practitioners who lead smaller improvement projects aligned to the improvement strategy. A typical ratio of Improvement Specialists to Improvement Practitioners in an organisation could be 1:10. In comparison with the work of an Improvement Practitioner, Improvement Specialists draw on their advanced knowledge and skills in applying Improvement principles and tools across a range of programmes/ projects/areas to build the capability of others. They also swiftly visualise processes, problems and opportunities and use both graphical and statistical analysis to deliver improvements. They work closely with other Improvement Specialists to support the delivery of improvement strategy, working on multiple simultaneous projects linked to key business objectives, identifying and engaging both subject matter experts and key stakeholders. Their work generally requires them to interact with others but typically involves a high-degree of autonomy.

Employers involved in creating the standard:

BT Group Plc, Toyota Motor Manufacturing (UK) Ltd, Capella Associates, Chartered Quality Institute, International Automotive Components Group Ltd, Jaguar Land Rover Ltd, SAIC Motor UK Technical Centre Ltd, Capella Associates Ltd, Wincanton Plc, GLAS Business Solutions Ltd, develop-u, National Skills Academy for Food & Drink, Britvic Soft Drinks Ltd, 2 Sisters Food Group, Ricoh Europe Plc, TUI Group Plc, Gleeds Management Services Ltd, Royal Mail Group Ltd, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, nuvia Limited, Bee Lighting Ltd, Clevedon Fasteners Ltd, Stadco Ltd, Kraft Heinz Company, British Standards Institution, Morson International Ltd, Testlink Services Ltd, Rolls-Royce Controls and Data Services Ltd, Leonardo – Helicopter division

eco

Mid Green occupation

Green themes

Financial and Professional Business Services
Manufacturing

Typical job titles include:

Business Improvement Consultant
Business Improvement Expert
Business Transformation Consultant
Chemical Engineer
Civil Engineer
Continuous Improvement Consultant
Environmental Engineer
Environmental Manager
Geotechnical Engineer
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
Mechanical Engineer
Process Excellence Manager
Business sustainability improvement consultanteco
Environmental improvement data analysteco
environmental improvement engineereco
Environmental improvement health and safety managereco
environmental improvement managereco

Keywords:

Administration
Business Management
Improvement Specialist
Improvement Strategies
Project Management

Knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs)

K1: Leading improvement teams: Personality types, team development stages, motivational techniques, situational leadership, learning styles, mentoring models
K2: Project planning: Multi-element business case, financial plan, benefits realisation plan, risk management plan, project plan
K3: Project reviews & coaching: Coaching models, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
K4: Change planning: Change management methods, impact/readiness, influencing strategies
K5: Commercial environment: Business and economic risks including changes in legislation, government regulation or trading condidtions that can impact all aspects of improvement from Project Selection through to selection/implementation of improvements
K6: Principles & methods for Improvement: How to apply Improvement Methods (eg. Practical Problem Solving, Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control, 8-Disciplines, Identify-Define-Optimise-Verify) across all functions, policy deployment principles, Lean culture
K7: Voice of the customer: Interviewing and focus groups, Quality Function Deployment principles and how to build a House of Quality
K8: Process mapping & analysis: Activity network diagrams, design structure matrix, process modelling, key function diagrams and analysis
K9: Data acquisition planning: Stratification, rational sub-groups, power and sample size
K10: Statistics & measures: Probability distributions and how to test for fit of probability distributions to data. Confidence intervals, central limit theorem. How to test data for stability and normaility and strategies for dealing with non-stable or non-normal data
K11: Lean concepts and tools: Principles of Lean Thinking and Lean tools including origins and cultural aspects critical to successful application within an organisation.
K12: Measurement system analysis: Repeatability & Reproducibility analysis. Long term measurement error
K13: Process capability: Data transformation, life data analysis and prediction
K14: Root cause analysis: Matrix plots, multi-vari charts, hypothesis testing principles and methods, correlation and regression principles and methods
K15: Experimentation: Principles of full and fractitional designed experiments including replicates, repeats, randomisation, blocking and centre points, resolution and confounding. Planning and analysis using residuals, main effects & interaction plots, hierarchy of terms, Response Surface Method, Split plots, Analysis of variance (ANOVA). Approaches for model optimisation
K16: Identification & prioritisation: Creativity tools e.g. theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), Pugh matrix
K17: Failure mode avoidance: System state flow, boundary diagram, interface analysis tables, fault tree analysis, robustness checklist, tolerance design and analysis. Principles and links between Failure Modes and Effects analysis for concepts, designs, processes.
K18: Sustainability & control: Control and reaction plans. Prevention controls

S1: Leading improvement teams: Holding team members/stakeholders to account for delivering agreed actions within an improvement project and building/maintaining appropriate stakeholder relationships inside and outside the organisation to deliver improvement project objectives
S2: Strategic Deployment of Continuous Improvement: Contribute to deployment of improvement strategy, participating as an active member of the improvement community
S3: Communication: Prepare and present concise proposals and plans. Capture and share progress through effective formats and channels. Use and handle questions effectively. Build rapport with others.
S4: Capability Development: Train, facilitate and critique the application of tools used by improvement practitioners including tool-selection, links between tools, how they are used within a structured method, analsysis of results and presentation of recommendations
S5: Project planning: Plan and manage finances, multi-stakeholder delivery and benefits realisation
S6: Change planning: Design reinforcement, engagement and communication strategies
S7: Principles and Methods for Improvement: Guide others on the selection of appropriate methods (eg. Practical Problem Solving, Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control, 8-Disciplines, Identify-Define-Optimise-Verify) to deliver improvements. Conduct gateway assessments to ensure suitability of projects to progress
S8: Project selection & scope: Guides others on the selection and scoping of improvement projects and the intial response to product/process performance issues. Identify, scope and prioritise improvement opportunities that map to high-level organisation objectives and key value-streams
S9: Process mapping & analysis: Guide others on the selection of appropriate process mapping and analysis tools. Critique improved state
S10: Lean tools: Identify and analyse value-streams using appropriate methods and tools to optimise flow to customer. Develop a plan for Lean deployment within the organisation including effective and relevant performance metrics
S11: Measurement: Guide others on the planning, analysis and interpretation of data collection & measurement studies including the design of tests to recreate failures & steps to diagnose/reduce short & long-term measurement variation
S12: Statistics & measures: Confirm data and fit for a range distribution models. Establish predictions. Calculate confidence intervals
S13: Data analysis-statistical methods: Model random behaviour and make inferences with levels of confidence. Calculate/recommend sample size. Test hypotheses for all data types. Assess input/output correlation. Generate, analyse and interpret simple and multiple predictive relationship models
S14: Process capability & performance: Identify data stability/distribution issues and apply appropriate strategies to enable robust Capability Analysis. Analyse life data to establish rates and patterns
S15: Root cause analysis: Make appropriate use of data to assess contribution of critical inputs/root cause(s) to product/process performance using appropriate graphical and statistical tools to draw and coomunicate conclusions
S16: Experimentation & optimisation: Guide others on the planning, analysis and interpretation of experiments. Plan,conduct, analyse and optimise both full & fractional experiments
S17: Data analysis – Statistical Process Control: Monitor and asses ongoing process variation and changes through chart-selection, control-limit setting, sample sizing/frequency and control-rules
S18: Benchmarking: Guide others on benchmarking to support all stages of improvement projects including future-state design
S19: Failure mode avoidance: Decompose complex systems in order to define main functions. Anaylse system interactions. Cascade knowledge through fault tree analysis. Create and assess design rules, standards & verification methods. Complete robustness studies to select appropriate control strategies and detection methods
S20: Sustainability & control: Guide others on control and sustainability planning including methods and tools to maintain benefits, extraction of learning, replication, sharing and consolidation of new knowledge into organisational learning

B1: Drive for results: Co-ordinates and delivers sustained improvement across the business by engaging with, and inspiring stakeholders; adopting a can-do attitude
B2: Team-working: Leads cross functional project teams proactively, regularly supports others and replicates learning
B3: Professionalism: Exemplifies high standard of professional integrity, ethics and trust within the organisation, whilst maintaining flexibility to the needs of the business
B4: Process Thinking: Drives process-thinking and customer-focused, data-driven decision making
B5: Continuous development: Identifies & models opportunities for development of self & others
B6: Safe working: Adopts a proactive approach to safety, encouraging others and suggesting compliance improvements
B7: Leadership: Drive for results with the ability to inspire and support project team members and manage stakeholder relationships. Promote the vision, organisational/project purpose and values. Understand and create the environment for an inclusive and diverse organisational culture.

Occupational Progression

This occupational progression map shows technical occupations that have transferable knowledge and skills.

In this map, the focused occupation is highlighted in yellow. The arrows indicate where transferable knowledge and skills exist between two occupations. This map shows some of the strongest progression links between the focused occupation and other occupations.

It is anticipated that individuals would be required to undertake further learning or training to progress to and from occupations. To find out more about an occupation featured in the progression map, including the learning options available, click the occupation.

Progression decisions have been reached by comparing the knowledge and skills statements between occupational standards, combined with individualised learner movement data.

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Business and administration

Engineering and manufacturing