During this section, you will be able to better understand important definitions regarding Kaizen in order to strengthen a Continuous Improvement culture within your team and across the organization.
What is Kaizen?
Kaizen, the Sino-Japanese word for “improvement”, is a concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. Kaizen also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life coaching, government, banking, etc.
By improving standardized programs and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste and redundancies (lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first practiced in Japanese businesses after World War II, influenced in part by American business and quality-management teachers, and most notably as part of The Toyota Way. It has since spread throughout the world and has been applied to environments outside business and productivity.
What are Kaizen Events?
Kaizen events are short-duration improvement projects with a specific aim for improvement; typically they are week-long events led by a facilitator with the implementation team being predominantly members of the area in which the kaizen event is being conducted and people that are closely linked to the process that the organization is trying to improve.
It is ideal to bring people closer to where the value is created to participate during these Kaizen events since usually these participants are the ones that could help understand the pain points of the process and they could visualize or test solutions that could help them better perform those processes.
Kaizen events, although normally promoted as one-off events, should be part of an overall program of continuous improvement if they are to be successful and for gains to be sustained. Events in an environment where they are not supported or understood generally have gains that are quickly eroded over a short period of time as people revert to their original ways of working.
During a Kaizen event, cross-functional teams will come together to apply various tools to improve one or more end-to-end processes. The methodology used to tackle these challenges is called P.D.C.A. – Plan, Do, Check, Act or D.M.A.I.C., DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.
Kaizen events are ideal when you are trying to improve an end-to-end process that is experiencing problems due to gaps that usually happen from one group to another, e.g. Finance and Operations.
Real Examples of Kaizen events:
- Examples
- Key Reflection Questions (included in participant guide)
- Now that you have a better understanding of what Kaizen is,
- What are some of the areas and or processes of your organization that you think could benefit from implementing a Kaizen?
- What areas or processes linked to your individual work could benefit from applying Kaizen?
- What are some of the benefits that you, your team, and/or your organization could experience by applying Kaizen?
- Other Resources
- Article. Kaizen
- Article. Kaizen event