Project portfolio selection in continuous improvement

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic overview of approaches to project portfolio selection in continuous improvement and to identify opportunities for future research. Design/methodology/approach – This paper reviews the extant literature on the theory and application of project portfolio selection in continuous improvement. Findings – Manufacturing organisations must routinely deliver efficiencies in order to compete, but their ability to realise sustainable competitive advantage from these improvements is hampered by the lack of objective approaches for targeting their improvement efforts. In this paper a normative framework for linking strategy to process improvement implementation is presented. The paper then examines the literature on portfolio and project selection in continuous improvement and presents a descriptive framework that represents the current state. Three gaps are highlighted: optimisation of the future state, portfolio generation, and the appropriate measurement to judge outcomes. Research limitations/implications – As a review, this work relies on the use of secondary sources. Some of these sources were published in publications that are not peer‐reviewed. Practical implications – There are significant limitations to the approaches used by industry for project selection but the methods described in the literature do not offer an adequate solution to this problem. Practitioners must be aware of the benefits and shortcomings of the methods and recognise that they assist with choice not design. Originality/value – This review fills a gap in the literature by providing researchers and practitioners with an overview of approaches, a better understanding of the shortcomings of current approaches and a normative model that highlights areas for further research.