b>Kaizen

What is Kaizen? A five word definition is: A system of continuous improvement

An improvement in what? Anything and everything in your facility, your production line, your office, materials handling, purchasing, operations, maintenance--any part of your company or organization can be improved by Kaizen. Using Kaizen results in improvements in quality, technology, processes, company culture, productivity, safety, and customer satisfaction throughout your organization.

Who can use Kaizen? Any organization from a manufacturer, to a government agency, to a non-profit organization. Big or small, Kaizen can help.

So let's get started. This introduction to Kaizen will look at three basic questions: What is Kaizen? What are the benefits of Kaizen? How do I get started using Kaizen?

What is Kaizen?

The word Kaizen means "continuous improvement". It comes from a combination of the Japanese words "Kai" meaning school and "Zen" meaning wisdom.

Kaizen is a system in which everyone is encouraged to come up with suggestions for small improvements on a regular basis. These are small changes targeted at continually improving productivity, safety, quality, customer satisfaction, employee effectiveness, communication, and at the same time reducing waste. The Kaizen philosophy is that everything, even it it isn't broke, can be improved.

Suggestions are not limited to a specific area such as production, shipping or marketing. Kaizen is based on making changes anywhere improvements can be made. The Kaizen philosophy is to continue to improve every aspect of a business, because if you don't, your competition is improving and will leave you behind.

What Are The Benefits of Kaizen?

With every employee, from the executive suite to the janitor, looking for ways to make improvements, you can expect results such as:

One of the first and most significant benefits noticed when Kaizen is introduced is the waste eliminated by Kaizen suggestions in areas such as inventory, waiting times, transportation, worker motion, employee's skills, over production, excess quality and in processes.

You'll find Kaizen suggestions will improves space utilization, product quality, use of capital, communications, production capacity and employee retention.

A major benefit of Kaizen is that it provides immediate results. Instead of focusing on large, long-term capital intensive improvements, Kaizen focuses on creative ways to continually solve large numbers of small problems. Capital projects and major changes may still be needed, and Kaizen will improve the capital projects process, but the real power of Kaizen is in the on-going process of continually making small changes that improve processes and reduce waste.

(Read about the benefits Sony achieved from using Kaizen in this magazine article reprint.)

How Do I Get Started Using Kaizen?

Kaizen starts by changing how everyone thinks. The attitudes of employees - from top management down to new hires will need to change. This means that management must actively lead, support and participate in the Kaizen process. The result must be something all employees participate because they want to, because they know it is good for them and the company. It can not be something employees do because management dictates that it be done.

To get started, employee training and communication is key. Employees need to know what Kaizen is, how it works and what it will do for them. This must be combined with proactive involvement of management. For example, managers could spend a week directly working with employees to help and encourage them to develop suggestions. It is also critical that managers ensure employees see their suggestions immediately acted on. Suggestions should not be implemented next month or even next week--but today. In some cases, a suggestion submitted in the morning can be put in place that afternoon, or sooner.

In addition to acting on suggestions quickly managers need to keep employees informed about what has happened to their suggestions. Don't let suggestions disappear into a management "black hole."

It is the managers job to develop methods to help encourage suggestions. For example, a manager might set up teams or five to 12 people to evaluate work areas, processes, quality, productivity, and equipment availability/reliability. The team then makes suggestions for improvements. The team may even implement improvements in the afternoon that they suggested in the morning.

To encourage the submission of suggestions, a part of each manager's and supervisor's evaluation should be based on the number of suggestions submitted by those they supervise. Don't evaluate employees on the number of suggestions they submit, evaluate your supervisors and managers and how well they are doing at getting those who work for them to actively participate in Kaizen.

Kaizen is a system that will improve your profits, quality, safety and productivity, when properly implemented and supported by management.