Kaizen is an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can reap significant improvements. Even though the Word ” Kaizen ” used generally in the sense of small improvements, the word itself doesn’t mean Small. The Japanese word kaizen means “change for better”, without inherent meaning of either “continuous” or “philosophy” in Japanese dictionaries. The term is highlighted by Masaaki Imai, in his book titled . “Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success” ( 1986 )
Kaizen has its origins in post-World War II Japanese quality circles. These circles or groups of workers focused on preventing defects at Toyota and were developed partly in response to American management and productivity consultants who visited the country, especially W. Edwards Deming, who argued that quality control should be put more directly in the hands of line workers.
Kaizen is one of the most powerful method of achieving improvements without much effort or large large scale project organization. Its more to do with empowering people. Over the period, Kaizen has become the most used term and developed to suit organizations to reap the benefits of this simple method. Kaizen is focusing on improving anything and everything without much fanfare. The only focus is “will it be better”. Typically, it is based on cooperation and commitment and stands in contrast to approaches that use radical or top-down changes to achieve transformation. Kaizen requires enabling the right mindset throughout a company and support in empowering people. The fundamental aspect to change in this mindset is challenge the status quo and how can we improve.
The seven step implementation of Kaizen in the organization
- Empower People Seek the involvement of employees, including empower them to identify problems and solutions. Empower collective gathering of ideas and decentralize improvements within own group.
- Find problems. Using widespread feedback from all employees, gather a list of problems and potential opportunities. Create a list if there are many issues. Identify the wastes in the system
- Find Solution – Encourage people to offer creative solutions. Pick a winning solution or solutions from the ideas presented. Reward the winning solution
- Test the solution. Implement the winning solution chosen above, Create pilot programs or take other small steps to test out the solution.
- Analyze the results and see the improvement. Do not focus on achieving targets. Key is Improvement and better than earlier. Make Changes or update solutions
- Standardize. If results are positive, adopt the solution throughout the organization.
- Repeat – Replicate – Restart – Make this ongoing and embed into the DNA of the organizational Culture
Advantages of Kaizen
- Employee morale grows because it can bring about a sense of value and purposefulness.
- Systems are in place to ensure improvements are encouraged both in the short term and the long term.
- Kaizen can create a gentler approach to change in contrast to big efforts that may be abandoned due to their tendency to provoke change resistance and abandonment.
- Kaizen encourages scrutiny of processes so that mistakes and waste can be reduced
Best Practice – Kaizen Burst
Kaizen Burst or Kaizen Blitz is an event designed to address a particular issue over the course of a week and is referred. These are limited in scope, and issues that arise from them are typically used in later blitzes. A person who makes a large contribution in the successful implementation of kaizen during kaizen events is awarded the title of “Zenkai”
Kaizen can be a used effectively in solution phase of any problem identified using the other lean tools