Kaizen

What is Kaizen?

Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy, of continuous improvement, where company employees at all levels, work together to achieve regular, incremental improvements to the manufacturing process. It focuses on applying small, daily changes that result in major improvements over time. Kaizen has most commonly been associated with manufacturing operations, as used in Toyota, but it has also been successfully adopted in non-manufacturing environments. With the continuous strive for efficiency and growth, many companies in various industries have followed Toyota’s lead and started practicing the Kaizen philosophy.

“Today better than yesterday. Tomorrow better than today.”

Kaizen, simply means change for the better: to improve productivity, reduce waste, eliminate unnecessary hard work and humanize the workplace. In simple terms, improve everybody, every day and everywhere.

Kaizen works by reducing waste “Muda”, variation or fluctuation “Mura” and eliminating work processes that are overly difficult “Muri” (The three M’s). As a lean business practice, it succeeds when all employees look for areas to improve and provide suggestions based on their observations and experience.

Kaizen aims for improvements in productivity, effectiveness, safety, and waste reduction, and those who follow the approach often find a whole lot more in return:

All of these translate into money savings and turn potential losses into profits. You can gain the benefits of the Kaizen approach in many other working environments too, at both a personal level and for your whole team or organization.

Masaaki Imai, a Japanese organizational theorist and management consultant known for his work on quality management, stated specifically on Kaizen:

“The concept is so deeply ingrained in the minds of both managers and workers that they often do not even realize that they are thinking kaizen”.

The Six-Step Cycle of Kaizen