Have you heard of Kaizen? It is an approach to continuous process improvement that comes from Japan. Masaaki Imai is considered to be the father of Kaizen.
What does the word Kaizen mean?
It means change for the better. Kazen is an expression composed of two words "kai", change, and "zen", good, better. Kaizen is a system of continuous improvement in personal, social, but also work-life, including both workers and managers. Kaizen is a way of life, a philosophy of life that cannot be mechanically transferred to another environment.
This system expresses efforts for continuous improvements in the company, which, however, are not realized by one-time big leaps of innovation, but by improving even the smallest details. Sometimes you may hear a Gemba kaizen connection. Gemba is where the activity or process that we want to improve takes place. In the manufacturing company, it is a workshop, in the hospital a surgery, in the hotel a dining room. Gemba is not a manager's desk, as it cannot be improved from the desk. Many companies still use the traditional way of working, where managers sit in their offices, the study analyzes and reports with tables and graphs, prepare strategies and concepts for cost reduction. From time to time, they walk around the operation and check that the floor is clean and that the workers are working hard enough. However, kaizen has a completely different approach.
This approach is based on two words, improvement and continuous. Everything can be improved from quality, meeting deadlines, costs, productivity, etc. Also, nothing in the world is fixed, everything is constantly changing and evolving, such as markets, products, customers and their requirements.
Kaizen is not a transfer of management responsibility to unprepared production workgroups, nor are it occasional meetings to address acute quality, adjustment or cost issues. It is a sophisticated and perfectly organized system of work, which is used in virtually all developed global companies.
What are the principles of the kaizen system?
Every improvement, even if only a small one, must be paid attention to. Kaizen is open to everyone, so all employees should participate in the improvement process. Before implementing any improvement, it must be accurately analyzed to the existing situation and possible positive or negative effects. Kaizen represents 50 per cent of the work of a good manager. Management has two main tasks, creating and maintaining standards and improving them. At the same time, the role of the work team, the promotion of participation and the initiative of employees in solving problems should be emphasized. It is good to look for a solution through team meetings led by a moderator. At the same time, good preparation and conduct of the meeting is important, as well as the selection of topics and ensuring the implementation of the adopted solution. It is also appropriate to inform about the current state of production, problems and business goals, navigation of the improvement process to areas that form constraints, or bottlenecks in the company.
Kaizen is built on bottom-up activities, but also requires strong support from above. Strong management support is one of the key principles of kaizen. Organizational prerequisites should be created to improve the possibilities of communication between employees, such as consultation rooms, visits by management staff in production, communication during production, etc. At the same time, employee motivation is important, as they participate in the success. Material and financial evaluation is a good solution.
Kaizen is also taking on new forms such as kaizen blitz or kaizen teian. First, Kaizen blitz was developed in the USA by AME, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. Its basic principles correspond to the kaizen principles described by Masaaki Imai. However, there are some differences such as significant support from senior management or a short duration of the improvement process, usually a maximum of one week, etc. Then kaizen teian is a system of training employees in the company through kaizen activities in the form of design improvement. It is, therefore, a system of continuous improvement of workers' designs.
What do you think about the kaizen system? Do you implement it in your company? What is your experience? Would you like to implement it? Share your opinions with us.