My experience from a decade in manufacturing is that people and copmanies can also be "competent" (using it in the sense of this article) at the process of impr

My experience from a decade in manufacturing is that people and copmanies can also be "competent" (using it in the sense of this article) at the process of improvement. That is to say not only do they have reliable, repeatable processes for the tasks they do every day, they also have reliable repeatable processes for improving those things. Using the example from the article, if the contractor was also competent at the improvement process, they would have the ability to experiment in a controlled way with new ways of doing things, and a repeatable process to apply lessons learned from those experiments to ensure that the next time they attempt something they improve on it. Being competent DOES NOT mean you have to be hidebound.