You should first know a little history behind the kaizen process before being able to successfully implement it. Understanding the origin will give you a wider understanding of the kaizen philosophy and how it can bring continuous improvement in whatever industry sector you are involved in.
The Kaizen Philosophy
The Kaizen philosophy was created by the Japanese sometimes after the Second World War. It was created as strategic formula to develop the country after it was brought down to its knees during the war. A lot was damaged and the progress the country had been initially making had been stalled.
It was therefore considerate to come up with the kaizen philosophy that would oversee the continuous improvement of a country that was at its low. The kaizen philosophy was implemented in the various industries and companies within the country. A program was developed as well which was mostly used in educating people on how to implement the kaizen philosophy into their business.
Companies implementing the kaizen principles know that they should immediately seize any form of production if they notice anything peculiar with the process. This is because the abnormality can back track any progress made and therefore reverse the kaizen process since you’ll no longer be improving.
The management can however ensure that the abnormality is identified and either removed or rectified. This will ensure that things resume to normalcy and continuous improvement is achieved.
Some of the procedures under the kaizen process are:
- Level or smoothen the different processes of production
- Identify the amount of processes i.e. duration each cyclic process consumes and the maximum capacity that the inventor can be able to take.
- Compare and contrast capacity to produce with need to produce
- Input creativity where necessary in order to fulfill company obligations and hence add value to revenue
- Sustain the process indefinitely
The kaizen burst, also known as the kaizen event, is a more detailed principle that can be used to bring direct impact in terms of continuous improvement. The main objective of the kaizen event is to ensure tat all efforts are directed to activities that are productive and can bring about fast improvement.
This does not, however, mean that any activity that doesn’t generate income should be shelved. It only means that an order of priority should be utilized at all time to identify what come first in he list. The kaizen event was also utilized to ensure that there was very little waste being produced due to lack of prioritization.
Additional Resources
- Getting Started with Kaizen– creativesafetysupply.com
- Understanding How The 5s Principles Came To Being– 5snews.com
- Kaizen Events, How vital is it to Lean manufacturing– blog.creativesafetysupply.com
- The Principles Of Lean Manufacturing– lean-news.com
- Kaizen Continuous Improvement– blog.5stoday.com
- 5 Kaizen Tools to Start Using– hiplogic.com
- Kaizen in the Workplace– babelplex.com
- What is Kaizen?– iecieeechallenge.org
- The Concepts of Kaizen– creativesafetypublishing.com