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To explain Kaizen, the nature of Kaizen helps to understand itself. The word, Kaizen, has gained recognition in the English vocabulary now. In Japanese, Kaizen means continuous improvement. The word implies improvement that involves all workers and entails relatively little expense. Toyota has been known as the first company that has started Kaizen. The application that Toyota used was called “Toyota Production System”, where all line personnel are expected to stop their moving production line in the case of any abnormality, and suggestions for improvement are rewarded. They succeeded eliminating all the wastes. Kaizen is used for placing the terms as productivity, total quality control (TQC), zero defects (ZD), and just-in-time (JIT). Therefore, Kaizen is a main concept for all these practices.
A lot of people have misunderstood about Kaizen. People have the stereotype that Kaizen can make dramatically changed immediately, and bring the profits right away. However, this is not true. Improvements under kaizen are small and incremental, but the kaizen will bring the huge results over time. Japanese management and Western management are different from the concept of the management. For western management, they tend to focus on the worships innovation which is pretty much relying on the changes in the technological breakthroughs. On the other hand, for the Japanese management, kaizen is not usually dramatic incident. But innovation is one -shot improvement, and its results are often problematic, while the kaizen process, which is based on common sense, low-cost approaches and low risk approach, assures incremental progress that pays off in the long run.
There are some concepts to understand kaizen. First of all about is “Kaizen and Management”. Basically, management has two sides: maintenance side and improvement side. Maintenance refers to maintain current technological, managerial and operating standards through training and discipline. Improvement refers to elevate current standards. Please recall that the difference between western management and Japanese management that are explained earlier, the western management should be classified as the edge of improvement side. On the other hand, Kaizen should be classified in a little improvement side from the middle of two. So, kaizen signifies small improvements as a result of ongoing efforts. Innovation involves a dramatic improvement as a result of a large investment of resources in new technology or equipment. However, western managers like to chase an immediate profit, they tend to overlook the long-term benefits that kaizen can bring, and also innovation has a lot of risks due to the high costs. Kaizen, on the other hand, focus on human efforts, morale, communication, training, teamwork, involvement, and self-discipline, which are cheap approach and low risk improvements.
Second concept that has to be understood is that kaizen focus on the process-oriented thinking which kaizen focus on human efforts, an orientation that contrasts sharply with the result-based thinking in the West. This process-oriented thinking indicates that there must be some problems in a process if the results are not favorable to the firm.
Third concept is that quality is the heist priority. There could be so many goals for the firms to achieve such as goals of quality, cost, and delivery. However, the firm should always put quality first priority. If the quality is not good, the firm is not able to compete. If managers make some changes on delivery to make it cheaper or cutting costs somehow, and it ends up making the quality worse, they risk sacrificing not only quality but the life of the business as well.
Fourth concept is “speak with data”. Kaizen is a problem-solving process. To correct the problems in a process, detecting the problems is the first thing to do. To do this, the data is the most helpful and accurately tool to use. Collecting data on the current status helps the firm understand more about its process. And the firm can verify and analyze the data to improve.
The last concept of kaizen is that the next process is the customer. This means that all workers think that nest process is the customers, so all workers in any process never pass on detective parts or inaccurate pieces of information to those in next process. If all workers have to be careful on what they are doing, the customers get the high-quality product and service as a result.
Next, the systems of kaizen have to be understood. Kaizen encompasses many of the components of Japanese businesses that have been seen as a part of their success. Total quality control/total quality management, small-group activities, suggestion systems, just-in-time delivery, and 5S are all included within the Kaizen system of running a business. Those systems are briefly explained in next.
Total quality control (TQC) and total quality management (TQM) are widely used in manufacturing, education, government and service industry now. TQC / TQM have been developed as a strategy to aid management in