Kaizen is the mother of all lean terms.
The word Kaizen is a combination of two Japanese words – KAI meaning change and ZEN meaning good. Kaizen is the epitome of continuous improvement and stands for the “change for the good”. Kaizen for your organization means continuous improvement involving everyone.
All together Kaizen is a collection of simple principles for improving your work but also stands for a management philosophy that has turned manufacturing principles upside down the way organizations think and act. The key of all success is that all employee should constantly critically review their processes and workplaces and improve them every day a little more.
You see Kaizen is a fundamental attitude for all players in your organization that results in high quality processes with zero defects on finished goods. Living Kaizen is the continuous strive to improve, simplify or optimize. This ongoing never ending process is therefore best known as the Continuous Improvement Process (CIP).
Kaizen does not depend on major innovations or fundamental changes, but on the everyday small improvements of your employees. The multiple suggestions for improvements paired with a rapid implementation mentality will show really fast their effect on success. The term of continuous improvement is fairly said just another way of the old fashioned suggestions scheme or idea management, which has a long history in the industry but less successful communicated and accepted.
To make a little list before writing too much I want to make it short. In order to pave the way for Kaizen thinking, a number of principles are linked to it, which should guide the thinking and behavior of all players in your organization.
- Daily small improvements in all areas of your organization
- Avoid any waste of material, time and money
- Consider all downstream process steps as customers and then improve performance and quality
- Improvements are always possible, it will never stop
- Constant improvements are made on a small scale and step by step
- No restrictions in terms of scope; products, services, processes, activities, technology, workplace – everything can be improved
- Different methods and tools can be used, the decisive factor is the effect, not the procedure
- Workplaces, work areas and the situation are viewed “on site”, things are viewed and analyzed live (Gemba Walks)
- With constant improvements, higher and higher standards are set and made the rule
- Kaizen is a task for all employees in the company
All employees of your organization are directly involved in the Kaizen activities and everyone has to participate. To secure the success of Kaizen each individual should invest an adequate amount of time of their working hours in Kaizen activities and focus on their commitment on improvements. As your organization has different departments and by this different employee groups their Kaizen activities are different as well (e.g.):
- Top management has to introduce and promote Kaizen as the fundamental principle and drive and monitor its implementation. It creates the right conditions within your organization
- Middle management implements the requirements of top management and ensures that standards are kept. It also promotes the way of thinking by offering appropriate training
- Team leaders support employees in developing ideas and implementing them. They are responsible for execution and success confirmation
- The operators or administrators at the operational level work out concrete suggestions for improvement and implement them. This can also be done in small groups. Kaizen employees improve their specialist knowledge and experience by participating in further training courses.
To give you an example of daily Kaizen routines 5S seems the all time favorite.
You can read the full article on how to implement 5S here. But I will make a short excursion on 5S just to explain the way of thinking. 5S prescribes:
- Seiri: Sort out all unnecessary objects
- Seiton: Clean-up and correct arrangement of needed objects
- Seiso: Keeping the workplace tidy so as to achieve the already established standards through 5S
- Seiketsu: Establishing regulations for work standards
- Shitsuke: Adherence to the Work standards and continuous improvement
Kaizen is always and everywhere its right to be applied.
Even when most of the people think that it is originally developed and deployed for the automotive industry (best known as the Toyota Production System) with clear mass manufacturing and assembly processes, there is no organization, yours included, that can not improve its performance and quality in terms of customer satisfaction, services, products and processes.
You see Kaizen has become a general way of thinking in all organizations and industries.
Thinking about organizations without Kaizen, you’ll see employees stick to rules and procedures with a “not my task” mentality. Only a few managers have to come up with fundamental long term changes. Kaizen on the other hand stands for the involvement of all employees and that everybody has to think every day what he/she can improve, simplify or optimize in his/her area of work for the “change for the good” of the complete organization, securing the long term success of your organization.
