Key Definitions

1.    Lean manufacturing – A systematic method of eradicating waste in a manufacturing process.

2.    Zenkai – An individual who has contributed to the successful adoption of Kaizen.

3.    Status quo – The current state of affairs of an organization. 

4.    Teamwork – The process of working together in order to realize an objective. 

Definition of Kaizen

Kaizen is a Japanese word that means continuous improvement. It is derived from two Japanese terms – Kai and Zen. "Kai" means continuous and "Zen" means improvement. In some cases, it's okay to translate "Kai" to mean "change" and "Zen to mean for the better or good. Therefore, Kaizen is sometimes interpreted to mean "change for the better."

Kaizen can also be defined as a Japanese management policy that advocates for "continuous slow improvement. It is a belief that all areas of life or work should be continuously improved. Kaizen encourages small changes, day after day.

Some people argue that kaizen equals small changes. But this is incorrect because Kaizen focuses on the great production gains that arise from continuous small changes accumulated over the years. Kaizen requires everyone in the organization to commit to making continuous improvements. Kaizen is built on the following principles:

Efficient processes yield great results.

See for yourself to understand the status quo.

Speak with stats, manage by facts. 

Focus on treating the root cause of inefficiencies.

Work in teams.

Everyone in an organization must commit to kaizen.    

The key principle behind Kaizen is segregation of the various aspects of the production process, analyzing each individually, rectifying the error, and then getting rid of muda (waste), and putting the clean processes back together to attain efficiency.

Kaizen requires improvement in all aspects of a business, thus, everyone - from managers to tactical level workers - must put effort to boost their efficiency. Kaizen also emphasis the need to restructure, change, and reorganize business processes to make them more efficient.

History of Kaizen

After the World War II, US occupation forces were tasked to aid Japan recover from the adverse damage it had suffered during the war. American experts together with Japanese managers searched for ways to enhance productivity, efficiency, and quality of products. 

One of the key members of this innovate processes was Toyoda Sakichi, the founder of Toyota Industries Co. Ltd which was manufacturing automatic looms. In the 1930s, Sakichi stated using quality circles resulting in development of what is now called "Toyota Production System."

Toyota manufacturing system is characterized by continuous improvement in technology, quality, safety, processes, productivity, company culture and leadership. These small, but continuous improvements across the organization adds up to major benefits such as lower production costs, faster delivery, and greater customer satisfaction.

In fact, as posted on the Toyotas Georgetown plant website, "Continuous improvement – kaizen – is the main pillar of Toyota Production System. The main goal of Kaizen is to eradicate "muda" (waste) in all stages of the manufacturing process. Kaizen also endeavors to enhance safety and quality of products. Kaizen focuses on:

Re-engineering manufacturing processes to reduce the physical demand on workers.

Making tasks easy and simple to perform.

Enhancing speed and efficiency of operations.

Building a safe work environment.

Consistently boosting the product quality."

The huge success of the TPS stimulated other Japanese firms to adopt a similar culture of gradual, continuous change. However, although the western managers knew that TPS was one of the most efficient production processes across the globe, they only started adopting the concept of Kaizen in 1986.

The Western world was introduced to Kaizen by Masaaki Imai, a Japanese management consultant and organizational theorists who in 1985, established the Kaizen Institute Consulting Group to help western managers understand the tools, systems, and concepts of kaizen.

In his 1986 book titled, "The Key to Japan's Competitive Success," Masaaki defined Kaizen as a means of ongoing improvement in working life, social life, personal life, and home life. At the workplace, it means ongoing improvement involving everyone – workers and managers alike.

 

Business Processes with and Without Kaizen

With Kaizen, not a day goes by without improvement in the organizations. See the figure below which shows the amount of time employees spend on innovation and daily system maintenance, with and without kaizen.

In an organization that hasn't adopted kaizen, supervisors and operators are typically busy with daily maintenance tasks such enforcing discipline, record keeping, expediting parts, and operators are normally busy with production. Only the top level and middle level management spend a small fraction of their time on innovation. No body works to attain continuous improvements.

On the contrary, in a kaizen business, every employee is involved in improvement activities. In a kaizen organization, the cumulative effect of the small, incremental improvement is radical change.

Kaizen and Personal Growth

One of the key principles of kaizen is to improve and/or change the easiest things first. That said, each week you could select an aspect of your life and implement an action plan to boost your performance in it.

Simply choose an area where you feel you could benefit from improvement, analyse the process carefully and ask what you can do to make it less wasteful, better or quicker. It's possible to use kaizen in almost every aspect of your life; from studying to spending more time with your family and doing household chores.

Adoption of Kaizen for personal improvement is well demonstrated by most peak business people, artists, and athletes.  

Kaizen VS Huge One-Time Changes

Instead of sinking hundreds and hundreds of dollars into purchasing machinery, Kaizen leads a firm towards paying more attention to little but important details. Managers and employees are encouraged to improve the effectiveness of the current infrastructures rather than buying new ones.

Kaizen improvements are often accomplished at no or little cost. Unlike one time radical changes, they kaizen improvements do not require complicated techniques and expensive equipment and tools.

Kaizen usually focuses on simplicity by breaking down tedious and complex processes into smooth and small sub-processes and perfecting them. The driving force behind this concept is dissatisfaction with the current situation (status quo), and the philosophy that "no matter how effective an organization is, stagnation will allow its rivals to overtake it."

The culture of being creative to make improvements or solve a problem not only educates the employees, but also it inspires them to go further and apply the same in their lives.