KAIZEN

It comes from the Japanese words ‘Kai’ meaning ‘change’ and “Zen” meaning ‘better, the combination of these words mean ‘change for betterment’. Once it is implemented as a continuous cycle it leads to “continuous improvement”. It's a soft and gradual method opposed to more usual western habits to scrap everything and start with new.

It’s a philosophy that defines management’s role in continuously encouraging and implementing small improvements involving everyone. It is the process of continuous improvement in small increments that make the process more efficient, effective, under control and adaptable. Improvements are usually accomplished at little to no expense, without sophisticated techniques or expensive equipment. It focuses on simplification by breaking down complex processes into their sub-processes and then improving them.

The Kaizen improvement focuses on the use of

• Value-added and non-value-added work activities.
• Muda; which refers to seven classes of waste i.e. over production, delays, excessive transportation, excessive and non value-added processing, excess inventory, wasted motion and defective parts.
• Documentation of standard operating procedures.
• The five S’s for workplace organization (five Japanese words)
• Seiko               -           proper arrangement
• Seiton              -           orderliness
• Seiketso          -           personal cleanliness
• Seiso               -           cleanup
• Shitsuke          -           discipline
• Visual management by means of visual displays that everyone in the plant can use for better communication.
• Just-in-time principles to produce only the units in the right quantities, at the right time and with the right resources.
• Poka-yoke (fail-safing or mistake-proofing) - to prevent or detect errors.
• Team dynamics, which include problem solving, communication skills and conflict resolution.

Kaizen relies heavily on a culture that encourages suggestions by operators who continually try to incrementally improve their job or process. An example of Kaizen type improvement would be the change in color of welding booth from black to white to improve operator’s visibility. This change results in a small improvement in weld quality and a substantial improvement in operator satisfaction.  

Kaizen is controlled; it is not acceptable to let anybody change designs, layouts or standards for some pretended "improvement". Most often Kaizen is controlled by improvement groups and everybody, regardless of rank or position, is encouraged to suggest through suggestion submitting system. Suggestions will be discussed by authoritative committee. Suggestions likely to be turned into application are usually rewarded according to the global gain. Improvement idea can be a response to a problem exposed by Kaizen committee or come out spontaneously.

KAIZEN Vs INNOVATION


Kaizen refers to continual improvements. Just carrying out business as usual contains the element of continuity but lacks the idea of improvement. Innovation refers to change or improvement but lacks continuity. Innovation with its strong innovative meaning is often a preferred way to carry out changes, improvements. Yet the Kaizen way and innovation are very different, the Kaizen approach is to make better use of existing resources.

	KAIZEN improvements	Innovation
Thinking	We know well our outfit, can be improved for small expenses	To improve yield, we need top of art material
Habits	Small changes	To be modified
Material	old one is improved	changed for latest state of arts
operator's reactions	good, they have been involved and informed	distrust, haven't been neither involved nor informed
Reliability	similar to before and generally even better	adjustments, failures, flaws, poor knowledge of this new equipment...
Costs (investments)	Reduced	Important
Costs (maintenance, operating)	similar	first unknown then usually important
Yield	improved quickly	important improvements, but long to come as it was necessary to get used to new equipment, to make it reliable, even modify it...

While Kaizen uses small steps, conventional know-how and a lot common sense, innovation comes in big steps and pursues technological breakthroughs. Kaizen is effort-based, while innovation is investment-based. Kaizen constantly reviews the process to check results consistency with targets, while innovation looks for results only. Are they slow to come or seem out of reach? the whole process might be changed.

The benefits to applying the principles of Kaizen are manifold. Solutions emphasize commonsense, low-cost approaches and continual adjustment, thus improvement becomes possible and further desirable. It is not even always necessary to gain upper management’s approval to make changes.