Kaizen Simplified - Pragathi





I have taught TQM for many years as an official subject for MBA students. During this time, I have also done multiple kaizen projects local and international with various industries. To name a few: HLL Life care Limited; Grasim Bhivani Textiles Limited; PT Elegant textiles Indonesia; TiE-Hubli and many more. The marriage between Academia and industry has given me a crisp understanding of kaizen. I am hoping to address things that I find important. Please free to share your views and opinion, I am happy to engage in a constructive discussion.

 

What is Kaizen?

According to Wikipedia kaizen means “change for better”. Kaizen means gradual, marginal, small, and continuous improvements done in our personal/professional life with zero or minimum investments to improve the quality of life and quality of work.

 

When I was conducting a workshop on kaizen, at Bhivani Textiles Limited, one of the participants asked me what is the meaning of kaizen from an Indian perspective. I told him kaizen means Pragathi, and that’s my definition of Kaizen.

 

Why Kaizen?

To remain competitive, we need kaizen. Kaizen is a mindset and more of a common sense. If kaizen becomes way of life, we will be in a virtuous cycle.

 

Can we do kaizen in real life?

Kaizen can be done everywhere and by everyone. As a student, you can practice kaizen in your daily activities. For example, if you want to improve your fitness, start it today without any procrastination and increase the phase step by step. If you want to learn a new language learn every word each day and slowly increase the phase. In industry every person can do kaizen in their work area to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

 

How to measure Kaizen in an organization?

Kaizen Participation Index (KPI) is a measure of Kaizen. Improve KPI every year to make kaizen program effective.

 

In simple words KPI measures “the percentage of employees engaged in an organization.” 

KPI = No. of people participated in kaizen * 100/ Total number of employee 

 

How to identify Opportunities for Kaizen?

Kaizen is supposed to be driven by intrinsic motivation – kaizen tends to be ideas that make our own work easier or allow us to do a better job for customers. If we want to improve our task kaizen will just happen. The opportunities to identify in kaizen are:

1.     Problem to solution

2.     War on waste

3.     Opposite requirements

4.     Perfection of know

5.     Seize the unknown

 

What are the main sources of Kaizen?

1.     Customer surveys

2.     Employee suggestions

3.     Brainstorming

4.     Benchmarking

5.     Performance appraisal

 

Famous companies that started and engaged in Kaizen

Toyota Production System is well known for implementing kaizen. Whenever problems were identified in the work area, it was seen as an opportunity for kaizen. Now kaizen has become the way of life at Toyota. On an average every employee implements one kaizen per month.

In India companies such as: Reliance Industries; Zydus Cadila; ABB Limited; Crompton Greaves; Thermax Limited; ITC Limited and many more have promoted kaizen.

 

Real life Kaizen Examples

My friend Vinayak Lokur, CEO of Expert Engineering, has been kind to share real life Kaizen examples from his organization. Thank you Vinayak.  Expert Engineering is an OEM supplier of Industrial valves for a number of leading companies in India, Russia, East and South Africa.

Below are 3 real life Kaizen examples with Kaizen worksheets.

 

Simple Kaizen -  as simple as organizing data

 

Commonsensical Kaizen

Technical Kaizen

 

Feel free to share your comments and suggestions. As said earlier I would be glad to cover a topic/subject that interests you.

 

‘One Small Step Can Change Your life: The Kaizen Way.’

‘One Small Step Can Change Your life: The Kaizen Way.’

The concept of Kaizen was born in Japan following World War II. The word Kaizen means “continuous improvement. It comes from the Japanese words 改 ("kai"), which means “change” or “to correct” and 善 (“zen”) which means “good. “Continuous improvement is doing what you do better and better! Kaizen means ongoing improvement involving everyone- top management, managers, and workers. Kaizen means small, simple and incremental improvements on a continuous basis and is everybody’s business. Kaizen focuses on small, gradual, and frequent improvements over the long term with minimum financial investment, and participation by everyone in the organization. Kaizen methods can be used to improve the results of any firm and can also be used in your personal life.

Kaizen was originally introduced to the west by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The key to Japan’s Competitive Success in 1986. Today Kaizen is recognized worldwide as an important pillar of an organisation’s long-term competitive strategy. Kaizen is a company-wide philosophy oriented toward continuous improvement. The literal definition extends to one’s personal and social lives. In business, it applies to continuing improvement applicable to everyone, both managers and employees. The main idea is to maintain and improve work standards, with responsibility delegated to the worker. Kaizen strategy is one of the most important concepts in Japanese management and is credited with being the key to Japanese competitive success. One important aspect of Kaizen is its emphasis on process, complemented with management acknowledgement. This contrasts with results-oriented management, which is ingrained in western thinking. Mostly, Kaizen focuses on identifying problem, finding a solution (idea), implementing and reporting the benefits.

Kaizen is a slow but ongoing process of improvement, not a 'blitz' or quickly implemented set of changes. The improvements are suggested by the person doing the work, not an outside evaluation team. If a worker has a problem to address or is considering whether a change will make sense, he should pull in several team members for a quick discussion and brainstorming session, and then decide what to do from there. While I visited Japan, I notices that most of the companies proudly displayed Kaizen from their employees and celebrated employee’s Kaizen improvements by creating company’s own Kaizen wall of Fame. By posting the idea on the wall, you give instant recognition to your employees for making the improvement. An example of Kaizen would be where an employee added a recycle bin to the photo copy machine. If you want to learn a new language, learn one new word every day or find and write down one sentence in a language that you want to learn every day. I recommend that you read “The Idea Generator, Quick and Easy Kaizen” by Bunji Tozawa and Norman Bodek. This book provides the quick and easy kaizen approach.