In this paper, upstream process of production system was studied and improved according to the modified plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle, known as check-act-plan-do (CAPDo). The PDCA cycle has been widely recognised and utilised by the industrial practitioners, but most of focus on the production processes and less consideration to the upstream process. This research has been conducted by reviewing the current trend of the continuous improvement program and developed systematic approach of upstream process to improve the production efficiency based on CAPDo cycle because it was consists of predecessor works of the production system and failure or inefficient will cause production delinquency. The result as implemented in a selected case study industry shows significant process improvement for upstream process. The waiting time of the production process due to misaligned time of the pre-preparation part has been identified as a root cause and this issue has been solved through the systematic approach. Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.