Infographic showing AimiHub's Journey and Timeline

Throughout the 1980's, Dr W. Edwards Deming reached thousands of people with his message to transform their organizations. He envisioned an organization that works as a system with the aim for all stakeholders to win. The transformation Dr Deming described requires a new style of management.

Organizations that recognized the importance of Dr Deming's message took steps to accomplish the transformation. Many organizations had a difficult time connecting their efforts in quality improvement to the strategic and day-to-day management of their organizations. What was missing was a template and method to get started.

In 1985, the members of Associates in Process Improvement (API) began work on a template to help organizations embody the philosophy taught by Dr Deming into the way they managed their organizations. The API team consisted of Jerry Langley, Ron Moen, Tom Nolan, and Lloyd Provost, and all worked with Dr Deming at his four-day seminars.

The API team, now joined by Cliff Norman, published “ The Improvement Guide: A Practical Approach to Enhancing Organizational Performance ” in 1995 (an updated second edition in 2009).

They determined it was crucial to have a common road map and method to guide the efforts to learn, improve, and focus on quality, throughout the organization.

The Model for Improvement was developed for this function. It has its foundation in the scientific method, brought to business by Shewhart.

The three questions are crucial to answer first as they build your charter and integrate change concepts into changes. They accelerate the building of knowledge by emphasizing a framework for learning, the use of data, and the design of effective tests. Developing a plan for the change and criteria to measure improvement, leads to the use of the PDSA cycle.

Model for Improvement Logo

It is easy for people to list their products or services and to describe the processes that produce them. It is much more difficult to know how to improve processes, products, or services.

In 2001, Jane and Cliff Norman established Profound Knowledge Partners Inc. (PKP Inc.) and in 2006 developed AmiTM (Accelerated Model for Improvement). It is based on the Model for Improvement and provides a structured and standardized approach.

This structured approach paves the way to repeatable improvements and helps with the spread of these improvements within the organization. It puts the organization in a “Learning Mode”, aligns teams to be on the same page, opening the door to become a learning organization.

AimiHub (Accelerated Innovation & Model for Improvement), is the digital version and next generation of AmiTM which was developed with PKP Inc. and is the only application that fully incorporates the Model for Improvement and PDSA Cycles.

AimiHub guides you to run PDSA Cycles for data collection and testing, as well as, implementation, to spread from a test-size to an organization-wide utilization.