What is Kaizen?

We can define kaizen very simply from its original Japanese as meaning “change for the better”, but what does this actually mean as a kaizen philosophy?

 

Japanese Kaizen

 

Kaizen began its life shortly after world war 2 when the US sent a number of advisers to help the Japanese rebuild their economy, one of these advisers Dr. Deming is often credited with the ideas behind Kaizen due to his 14 points for management, point 5 stating;” Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.”

The training within Industry (TWI) organization also had a training program that promoted the continual improvement of processes through using workforce suggestions (“how to improve war production methods”, later becoming “how to improve production methods”) and this is credited by Masaaki Imai as being the origin of kaizen also.

Masaaki Imai wrote the book which very much reintroduced the ideas back to the west. He describes Kaizen as being daily incremental changes to the process for the better.

Kaizen as seen by the Japanese (especially Toyota as part of the Toyota Production System TPS) is a method of involving the workforce to come up with many ideas for improvement, each employee is expected to come up with (and implement) 3 to 5 improvement ideas each and every month. The power of this method is not in the individual small improvement but in the combined power of many hundreds of small improvements moving the business forward constantly.

These ideas and the many improvements are expected in every area of the company from suppliers through to customer delivery and from cleaner upwards to CEO. Every area and every process requires to be constantly improving if a company is to constantly cut costs, improve quality and produce products and services quicker and thus win and keep business.

 

Western Kaizen

Kaizen Event in Process

Many companies in the west still have not mastered the art of (and realized the need for) involving the entire workforce in improvement; many consultancies therefore “sold” kaizen not as a process and philosophy of continuous improvement but as a kaizen blitz technique to rapidly improve a process in the space of a few days (typically a weeklong event.)

These Kaizen events (Kaizen blitz, kaizen burst, focused improvement teams, kaizen workshops, etc.) are led by expert facilitators to create a step change improvement in a short space of time, often in response to a crisis within a company rather than as a need to continually improve their processes.

They are often criticized by their detractors as not being as effective as “true Japanese kaizen” but in my mind they have their place if run correctly. Often these events are just one off events without any real support or change in culture so quickly revert and the gains are not sustained, used correctly though as an ongoing program of events they can make significant improvements to a business.

Sometimes a business needs to make a step change in its operations and many small improvements over a long period of time may not be enough, used appropriately Kaizen blitzes are a powerful improvement tool used within a culture of continual improvement. As a method to impose change on an unconvinced and uninvolved work force however they are doomed to eventual failure.

 

The need for Kaizen continuous Improvement

 

Typically a consumer will want a product or service that is the “best” quality, lowest price and available when they want it (more often than not “right now.”) If you are the market leader today but fail to continually improve your product and service eventually a competitor will either make it quicker, better or cheaper and take your business.

This is why a business must continually improve to maintain their market share, not wait until they lose their position and then make panic reactions to gain back what they have lost.

 

Continuous Improvement vs Corrective Action

 

Some people also see kaizen to be about using teams to solve problems within the company, while using teams for problem solving is the right approach it is not Kaizen nor is it true continuous improvement. Kaizen and pure continuous improvement are very much about making improvements for the sake of improvement not for correcting a problem. Correcting a problem tends to just maintain the status quo whereas kaizen continuous improvement pushes the company a little closer towards perfection every day.