In the world of continuous improvement methodologies, achieving success is only half the battle. The real challenge lies in maintaining those improvements over time. This is where the Sustain phase of RDMAICS (Recognize, Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, and Sustain) becomes absolutely critical. While many organizations celebrate their victories after implementing improvements, they often fail to recognize that without proper sustainment, their hard-won gains can quickly evaporate.
The Sustain phase represents the final and perhaps most crucial stage of the RDMAICS methodology. It goes beyond the traditional Control phase found in DMAIC, adding an extra layer of long-term thinking that ensures improvements become permanently embedded in organizational culture. This comprehensive guide will explore the Sustain phase in depth, providing practical strategies, real-world examples, and actionable insights for maintaining process excellence.
Understanding the Sustain Phase in RDMAICS
The Sustain phase is the culminating step in the RDMAICS framework, designed specifically to prevent the common phenomenon of improvement backsliding. Research indicates that approximately 70% of organizational change initiatives fail to maintain their initial gains within two years of implementation. This sobering statistic underscores why the Sustain phase deserves dedicated attention and resources.
Unlike the Control phase, which focuses on monitoring process performance and responding to deviations, the Sustain phase emphasizes cultural transformation, knowledge management, and organizational capacity building. It answers the fundamental question: How do we ensure that today’s improvements become tomorrow’s standard operating procedures?
The Key Differences Between Control and Sustain
While Control focuses on statistical process control, monitoring dashboards, and corrective actions, Sustain takes a broader, more strategic view. The Control phase typically involves:
- Establishing control charts and monitoring plans
- Setting response protocols for out-of-control conditions
- Documenting standard operating procedures
- Training team members on new processes
The Sustain phase builds upon these foundations by adding:
- Cultural change management initiatives
- Leadership development programs
- Knowledge transfer systems
- Continuous improvement infrastructure
- Recognition and reward mechanisms
- Organizational learning frameworks
Critical Components of the Sustain Phase
1. Establishing a Continuous Improvement Culture
The foundation of successful sustainment lies in creating an organizational culture where continuous improvement is not just accepted but expected. This cultural transformation requires deliberate effort and sustained commitment from leadership at all levels.
Consider the example of a mid-sized manufacturing company that implemented a lean initiative to reduce defect rates in their assembly line. Initially, the project achieved remarkable results, reducing defects from 4.5% to 0.8% within six months. However, the real test came during the Sustain phase.
The organization implemented several cultural initiatives:
- Daily improvement huddles where frontline workers shared observations and suggestions
- A “mistake-proofing champion” program recognizing employees who identified potential quality issues
- Monthly town halls where leadership discussed improvement metrics transparently
- Cross-functional improvement teams with rotating membership
Two years after the initial implementation, defect rates remained at 0.9%, demonstrating successful sustainment. More importantly, the organization reported 150 employee-generated improvement suggestions annually, compared to just 12 before the cultural transformation.
2. Knowledge Management and Documentation
Effective knowledge management ensures that improvement insights survive personnel changes, organizational restructuring, and the passage of time. This goes far beyond simply maintaining updated standard operating procedures.
A comprehensive knowledge management system for the Sustain phase includes:
- Detailed process documentation with visual aids and multimedia elements
- Lessons learned repositories accessible to all relevant stakeholders
- Expert knowledge capture through interviews and shadowing programs
- Searchable databases of improvement projects with before-and-after data
- Case studies highlighting successful sustainment stories
For example, a healthcare organization implementing a patient flow improvement project created a comprehensive knowledge management portal. The portal included video demonstrations of new triage procedures, interactive decision trees for staff, archived data showing improvement trends, and a forum where staff could ask questions and share experiences. When the original project champion retired, the organization experienced no degradation in performance because the knowledge had been thoroughly captured and made accessible.
3. Leadership Commitment and Visible Sponsorship
Sustained improvements require sustained leadership attention. The Sustain phase demands that organizational leaders move beyond initial project sponsorship to become active champions of the improvement culture itself.
Effective leadership behaviors during the Sustain phase include:
- Regular gemba walks (going to the actual place where work happens)
- Participating in improvement team meetings and celebrations
- Allocating resources specifically for sustainment activities
- Making improvement metrics part of performance reviews
- Publicly recognizing and rewarding sustainment efforts
- Addressing resistance and obstacles promptly
Practical Strategies for Successful Sustainment
Building Robust Monitoring Systems
While monitoring begins in the Control phase, the Sustain phase requires evolving these systems to prevent complacency and detect subtle degradation before it becomes problematic.
A financial services company provides an excellent illustration. After improving their loan processing time from an average of 12 days to 5 days, they established a multi-tiered monitoring system:
Tier 1: Daily Metrics
Average processing time tracked daily with alerts for any day exceeding 6 days. This data was reviewed each morning by team leads.
Tier 2: Weekly Analysis
Weekly review of processing time distribution, identifying any shifts in variation patterns. The team looked at percentiles (50th, 75th, 90th) rather than just averages.
Tier 3: Monthly Deep Dives
Monthly analysis of contributing factors, including staff workload, application complexity, and system performance. This helped identify emerging trends before they became problems.
Tier 4: Quarterly Strategic Review
Quarterly executive review connecting processing time metrics to customer satisfaction scores, competitive positioning, and business outcomes.
This layered approach enabled the organization to maintain their improved processing time at an average of 5.2 days for over three years, with no significant degradation.
Creating Self-Sustaining Improvement Infrastructure
Organizations that successfully sustain improvements build infrastructure that enables continuous improvement to happen naturally, without requiring heroic efforts or constant management attention.
Key infrastructure elements include:
- Standardized improvement project methodologies and templates
- Trained internal coaches and facilitators
- Regular improvement events scheduled on organizational calendars
- Dedicated time allocation for improvement activities
- Technology platforms supporting collaboration and data analysis
- Clear escalation paths for addressing obstacles
A distribution center serves as a practical example. They established a “continuous improvement office” staffed by two dedicated coordinators and supported by trained Green Belts throughout the organization. This office maintained a calendar of monthly kaizen events, provided coaching to improvement teams, managed a project portfolio, and tracked benefits realization. The infrastructure became self-perpetuating, with the organization completing 45 to 50 improvement projects annually without requiring external consultants or extraordinary management intervention.
Implementing Effective Training and Development Programs
Sustainment requires that improvement capabilities spread throughout the organization, rather than remaining concentrated in a small group of experts. This necessitates ongoing training and development programs.
A comprehensive training strategy for the Sustain phase includes:
- Onboarding programs introducing new employees to improvement methods
- Role-specific training tailored to different organizational levels
- Refresher training to prevent skill degradation
- Advanced training for employees ready to take on greater improvement responsibilities
- Train-the-trainer programs building internal training capacity
Consider a retail organization that implemented a multi-level training approach. All new employees received four hours of basic continuous improvement training during orientation. Supervisors completed an additional 16-hour program focused on facilitating team improvements. High-potential employees could pursue Green Belt certification, and the organization maintained a pool of 20 certified Green Belts. This training infrastructure ensured that improvement capabilities were distributed throughout the organization, making sustainment more resilient to personnel changes.
Measuring Sustainment Success
Quantitative Metrics
Effective sustainment requires measuring not just the continued performance of improved processes, but also the health of the improvement system itself.
Primary process metrics should track the original improvement targets over extended periods. For instance, if a project reduced customer complaint resolution time from 72 hours to 24 hours, sustained success means maintaining that 24-hour performance for years, not months.
Sample data from a sustained improvement project in customer service:
Month 1-6 (Improve Phase): Average resolution time decreased from 72 hours to 24 hours
Month 7-12 (Control Phase): Average resolution time maintained at 24-26 hours
Month 13-24 (Sustain Phase, Year 1): Average resolution time 25-27 hours
Month 25-36 (Sustain Phase, Year 2): Average resolution time 23-26 hours
Month 37-48 (Sustain Phase, Year 3): Average resolution time 22-25 hours
This data demonstrates not only sustained performance but continued optimization, indicating a healthy improvement culture.
Secondary metrics should measure the improvement system itself:
- Number of active improvement projects
- Percentage of employees participating in improvement activities
- Employee-generated improvement suggestions per capita
- Implementation rate of suggested improvements
- Time from problem identification to solution implementation
- Return on investment from improvement activities
Qualitative Indicators
Numbers alone cannot tell the complete story of sustainment. Qualitative indicators provide insight into the cultural dimensions of sustained improvement:
- Employee engagement survey scores related to empowerment and problem-solving
- Frequency and quality of improvement conversations during routine meetings
- Willingness of employees to speak up about problems and suggest solutions
- Cross-functional collaboration on improvement initiatives
- Leadership behaviors demonstrating commitment to continuous improvement
Common Sustainment Challenges and Solutions
Challenge 1: Competing Priorities
Organizations frequently struggle to maintain focus on improvement when facing immediate operational pressures. New initiatives, market changes, or crisis situations can quickly divert attention from sustainment activities.
Solution: Integrate improvement into regular operational rhythms rather than treating it as separate. When improvement activities are built into daily huddles, weekly team meetings, and monthly reviews, they become part of normal operations rather than competing with them. Additionally, establishing minimum time allocations for improvement (for example, 5% of work time) can protect against complete abandonment during busy periods.
Challenge 2: Personnel Turnover
When key improvement champions leave the organization or move to different roles, their departure can jeopardize sustained performance.
Solution: Distribute improvement knowledge and responsibilities broadly rather than concentrating them in individuals. The knowledge management systems discussed earlier become critical here. Additionally, succession planning should specifically address improvement leadership roles, with identified successors shadowing current champions before transitions occur.
Challenge 3: Improvement Fatigue
Even positive change creates stress. Organizations risk improvement fatigue when the pace of change exceeds people’s capacity to absorb it.
Solution: Balance the portfolio of improvement initiatives, ensuring a mix of quick wins and longer-term projects. Celebrate successes and provide recovery time between major change efforts. Monitor employee sentiment regarding change initiatives and adjust pace accordingly. One organization implemented a “change capacity dashboard” tracking the number and intensity of active change initiatives across different departments, using it to make conscious decisions about timing and sequencing.
Challenge 4: Gradual Process Drift
Even with good intentions, processes naturally drift from their optimized state through small, incremental changes that seem insignificant individually but compound over time.
Solution: Implement regular process audits that compare current performance not just against control limits but against original capability demonstrated during the Improve phase. Conduct annual “process health checks” that re-examine fundamental process design assumptions. One manufacturing facility conducts quarterly “process resets” where teams deliberately return to documented standard procedures and verify that actual practice matches the standard.
Real-World Case Study: Sustained Excellence in Healthcare
A regional hospital network implemented a patient safety improvement initiative focused on reducing medication administration errors. The initial project achieved impressive results, reducing errors from 8.5 per 1,000 doses to 2.1 per 1,000 doses over an eight-month period.
The Sustain phase strategy included multiple components:
Cultural Elements:
Patient safety became a standard agenda item at all meetings, from board level to unit huddles. The organization implemented a “stop the line” policy empowering any employee to halt a process if they observed a safety concern. Safety stories were shared at monthly all-staff meetings, celebrating both problem identification and resolution.
Infrastructure Elements:
The hospital established a Patient Safety Council with representatives from every clinical unit. They created a rapid response process for investigating any medication error within 24 hours. A medication safety dashboard was developed and displayed prominently in each nursing station.
Knowledge Management:
Every medication error investigation produced a one-page case study added to a searchable database. Monthly newsletters highlighted lessons learned and near-miss situations. New employee orientation included four hours of medication safety training featuring real cases from the organization’s experience.
Monitoring System:
Daily tracking of medication errors by unit, shift, and error type. Weekly analysis identifying emerging patterns. Monthly deep-dive reviews examining contributing factors. Quarterly external benchmarking against other hospital networks.
Results:
Four years after the initial improvement project, medication administration error rates averaged 2.3 per 1,000 doses, demonstrating sustained performance. More remarkably, near-miss reporting increased by 400%, indicating a culture where employees felt safe identifying potential problems before they became actual errors. The organization received external recognition for patient safety excellence and became a benchmark site for other healthcare organizations.
Creating Your Sustainment Action Plan
Implementing a successful Sustain phase requires deliberate planning and commitment. Organizations should develop a comprehensive sustainment action plan addressing all critical components:
Step 1: Assess Current State
Begin by honestly evaluating your organization’s current sustainment capabilities. Consider questions such as:
- How many previous improvement initiatives have maintained their gains for more than two years?
- What percentage of employees actively participate in improvement activities?
- How much dedicated resource exists for improvement infrastructure?
- What knowledge management systems currently exist?
- How deeply is continuous improvement embedded in organizational culture?
Step 2: Define Sustainment Vision
Articulate a clear vision for what sustained improvement looks like in your organization. This vision should address both process-level sustainment (maintaining specific improvements) and system-level sustainment (building organizational capacity for continuous improvement).
Step 3: Identify Critical Success Factors
Determine which factors are most critical for sustainment in your specific
