Kaizen : Another effective Lean Tool

Kaizen

The word “Kaizen”, also like many of its lean counterparts has its roots in Japanese. It’s a compound word made up from “Kai” (Change) and “Zen” (Perfection/Improvement).

Kaizen was also a part of the TPS (Toyota Production System), wherein traditionally a Toyota team at a manufacturing plant would temporarily halt its production in case of repeated abnormalities and the teams along with their supervisors would try to come up with a newer approach “then-and-there” to solve the particular issue once and for all. This type of activity was termed as a Kaizen-blitz. This practice led to the idea to use small focused improvements in 3-5 day cycles leading to vast improvements in quality which has now become known as “Kaizen”.

A Kaizen event or blitz typically uses existing simple tools like 5S, A3, 5 Why’s and Pareto etc. in combination to solve problems on a production floor.

The central idea behind Kaizen is to achieve small but precious “quick-wins” which improves the culture of change, continuous improvements and eases Lean adoption in any organization.

While Kaizen may be a concentrated improvement activity in a short-span, it is done in a structured manner and often you will find yourselves using Deming’s PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) or the “Shewhart Cycle” along with A3 (using a single A3 sheet for root-cause-analysis and planning improvements) and 5 Whys to solve problems in the Kaizen way.

In short Kaizen is:

1. Let’s do improvements now/ASAP.
2. Small quick-wins to improve employee morale, facilitate change easily and enable lean.
3. A step-by-step continuous improvement philosophy.
4. Is reliant upon other lean tools as enablers.

However, in order that Kaizen is successfully achieved, some ground rules or Kaizen-principles that may come in quite handy are:

1. A team must start the Kaizen-blitz together at the same time and end the work-day with definite goals for the next day.
2. Keep an open-mind and make sure everyone’s opinion is valued and believe that improvement is possible in every idea/process.
3. No blame games need to be played and team must try to collectively solve the problem at hand.
4. Finally, try to address the root-cause of the problem (5 whys and Pareto are handy here), look for quick-wins not quick-fixes.