Kaizen (Japanese: 改善; "improvement") is a Japanese vocabulary word that outside of Japan has been adopted as a concept in business studies which asserts that significant positive results may be achieved due to the cumulative effect of many, often small (and even trivial) improvements to all aspects of a company's operations. Kaizen is put into action by continuously improving every facet of a company's production and requires the participation of all employees from the CEO to assembly line workers. Kaizen also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. Kaizen aims to eliminate waste and redundancies. Kaizen may also be referred to as zero investment improvement (ZII) due to its utilization of existing resources. Kaizen originated from the work and knowledge of American business advisors tasked with Japan’s postwar recovery. These principles were later adopted and practiced in Japanese businesses, and most notably became part of The Toyota Way. It has since been popularized throughout the world and has been applied to environments outside of business and productivity.
History In 1947, Edwards Deming, an American statistician, went to Japan to help enhance their production processes. He stressed that quality should be prioritized at every stage of production, achieved through statistical process control. Deming is particularly recognized for his PDCA cycle—Plan, Do, Check, Act—which advises stopping production when deviations occur to identify and resolve issues before continuing. During his time in Japan, he trained hundreds of engineers, managers and executives in his approach. Deming developed his concepts into what he termed "total quality management," which eventually laid the groundwork for Toyota's Toyota Production System focused on just-in-time manufacturing.
Overview The word kaizen is a Japanese borrowing of a word from Classical Chinese. It is thought to have entered Japan during the Nara period in Chinese translations of Buddhist scriptures. The Classical Chinese word has descendants in modern Chinese languages, such as Mandarin gǎishàn and Cantonese góisihn, which are both verbs meaning "to improve". The Japanese word kaizen means "improvement" or "change for better", without the inherent meaning of either "continuous" or "philosophy" in Japanese dictionaries or in everyday use. The word refers to any improvement, one-time or continuous, large or small, in the same sense as the English word improvement. However, given the common practice in Japan of labeling industrial or business improvement techniques with the word kaizen (often written phonetically in katakana as カイゼン), particularly the practices spearheaded by Toyota, the word kaizen in English is typically applied to measures for implementing continuous improvement, especially those with a "Japanese philosophy". The discussion below focuses on such interpretations of the word, as frequently used in the context of modern management discussions. Two kaizen approaches have been distinguished:
Point kaizen Point kaizen (現場改善, Genba kaizen) is one of the most commonly implemented types of kaizen. It happens very quickly and usually without much planning. As soon as something is found broken or incorrect, quick and immediate measures are taken to correct the issues. They are typically done at the individual level. Although these measures are generally small, isolated and easy to implement, they can have a significant impact. In some cases, it is also possible that the positive effects of point kaizen in one area can reduce or eliminate benefits of point kaizen in some other area. Examples of point kaizen include a shop inspection by a supervisor who finds broken materials or other small issues, and then asks the owner of the shop to perform a quick kaizen (5S) to rectify those issues, or a line worker who notices a potential improvement in efficiency by placing the materials needed in another order or closer to the production line in order to minimize downtime.
System kaizen System kaizen is accomplished in an organized manner and is devised to address system-level problems in an organization or any production factory. It is an upper-level strategic planning method for a short period of time.
Line kaizen Line kaizen refers to communication of improvements between the upstream and downstream of a process. This can be extended in several ways.
Plane kaizen This is the next upper level of line kaizen, in that several lines are connected together. In modern terminologies, this can also be described as a value stream, where instead of traditional departments, the organization is structured into product lines or families and value streams. It can be visualized as changes or improvements made to one line being implemented to multiple other lines or processes.
Cube kaizen Cube kaizen describes the situation where all the points of the planes are connected to each other and no point is disjointed from any other. This would resemble a situation where Lean has spread across the entire organization. Improvements are made up and down through the plane, or upstream or downstream, including the complete organization, suppliers and customers. This might require some changes in the standard business processes as well.
Quick kaizen Quick Kaizen, also referred to as Rapid Kaizen or Blitz Kaizen, stands out as a method geared towards swiftly addressing operational challenges without necessitating prolonged engagement from multiple teams. Unlike traditional kaizen events that may involve cross-functional collaboration and span several weeks, Quick Kaizen focuses on expedited problem-solving, typically concluding within a few weeks and requiring limited team involvement.
Application
The 5S movement The 5S are primarily aimed at the workshop workplaces, whereby the workplace is understood as the place where the value-adding processes in the company take place.
Seiri Create order: remove everything that is not necessary from your workspace! Seiton Love of order: organize things and keep them in their proper place! Seiso Cleanliness: keep your workplace clean! Seiketsu Personal sense of order: make 5S a habit by setting standards! Shitsuke Discipline: make cleanliness and order your personal concern!
The 7M checklist These are the seven most important factors that must be checked again and again:
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