Continuous Improvement - Using Kaizen to Your Advantage

What is Kaizen?

Toyota's Production System is established on Continuous Improvement. This fresh strategy is actually just the Western version of the Kaizen scorecard. Kaizen, interpreted from Japanese, means quite literally "Good Change". In English, people employ this to indicate continuous improvement, flawlessness, and continual expansion. Essentially, Kaizen is an improvement program for any work area. To assist Japan's devastated post-war economy, The War Department's "Training Within Industry" program contacted expert statisticians to improve their chances in the global market.

Toyota Motor Corporation has taken process improvement methods that arose in the fifties and then introduced its own technique called the Toyota Production System. Juran's statistical approach, Deming's Shewart cycle, and Kaizen are only three illustrations of developments Toyota Motor Corporation based its method on. Although past strategies relied on instruction and education of their employees, Toyota Motor Corporation journeyed many degrees further by demanding production lines to be shut down if a defect had been discovered. Once that transpires at Toyota, the line laborers, executives and the employees having administrative responsibilities work together to discover and overcome the reasons why production needed to be stopped.

Kaizen is a great way to save on spending in manufacturing. Kaizen is being used more and more around the world. By using this program, less proficient tactics will be weeded out, leading to increased employee morale, reduced waste and increased productivity. The advantages will not only benefit the owners but also the employees as well as the stockholders. The Kaizen concept can be implemented on a large, small or personal level.

Why Kaizen Fails

Putting this strategy into place requires evaluating every level of production. One of the first tasks is to time the entire process from start to finish, allowing executives to see what part of the production process is taking longer than it should. Improved time management by cutting delays and slowed actions delivers bottom line efficiency results. The Kaizen system streamlines communication at all levels, which also results in better efficiency. Until every bit of extra time and wasted effort has been pulled from the process, the strategy cannot be called a success. However, once you have, you can be sure you've created a first class production process.

For the purpose of supervision and administration, it is very necessary to use a Kaizen Scorecard, which indicates the implementation of continuous improvement in day to day work of the company. Since Kaizen is expanding continuously, review and adjustment when required are essential. Eventually, Kaizen can increase productivity, cash flow, workmanship and total success.