How do you apply them and a Kaizen philosophy in a real-life situation?
Good processes create good results
The basic idea of Kaizen is to constantly look for ways to improve and never stop trying to improve. We know how hard that can be—Kaizen is not a simple process and can be very stressful! But at the heart of Kaizen is the belief that even small changes can have a considerable impact on results, so it’s important not to let the pressure get to you. Suppose you focus on only improving one thing a day, all the while thinking about how each adjustment plays into your larger goals. In that case, you will notice an improvement in many different areas, such as employee morale, company culture and financial success.
Improvements start with small changes
At its core, Kaizen is concerned with continuous improvement by reducing waste in processes, guided by the critical belief that good processes lead to good results. In lean manufacturing, this means that reducing waste in a process adds value to the customer.
To make incremental improvements, you have to pinpoint the root of your problem. Doing so will allow minor faults to be caught and fixed before they become more significant issues that require more time and money to eradicate. This helps prevent problems from occurring again and also allows employees to know what kind of mistakes can be avoided in the future.
Improvements must be measurable, standardized and repeatable
Kaizen can be described as a method for incremental, continuous improvement in workplace efficiency based on the model of the continuous, gradual change introduced by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The Key To Japan’s Competitive Success. To harness the power of Kaizen and sustain positive change initiatives, Imai suggests companies are best served by standardizing practices and policies associated with existing methods. Once standardized, these procedures should be documented, so everyone on your team understands how things are done.
Kaizen focuses on eliminating waste by creating a visual control system of standardized work. To evaluate improvements objectively, existing procedures must be managed with facts. Further, changes should be documented, and all employees must be trained on new procedures associated with these changes. Kaizen is a Lean methodology.
Empower the people doing the work
We’ve coined our company-wide strategy Kaizen. It favours the idea that employees at all levels of an organization are the ones who are in the best position to identify problems and suggest improvements in their work areas. When more team members feel like they have a stake in what goes on, productivity can improve performance, motivation, and morale! The best place to be exercising Kaizen is at the Gemba and this is called Gemba Kaizen.
Genba (現場, also romanized as gemba) is a Japanese term meaning “the actual place”. Japanese detectives call the crime scenegenba, and Japanese TV reporters may refer to themselves as reporting from genba. In business, genba refers to the place where value is created; in manufacturing the genba is the factory floor. It can be any “site” such as a construction site, sales floor or where the service provider interacts directly with the customer. (Wikipedia)
To sustain a culture of continuous improvement at your company, your managers and other leaders within the organization must be knowledgeable about Kaizen. Encourage them to be part of your efforts, and when they are on board, make sure they’ll do their bit in ensuring others in the company are encouraged by the importance of improving just as you have been. It’s all about setting an example for your team to follow!
Our 5th principle of Kaizen – Give the people the tools
Give the people the tools to help them do the Kaizen work. You would not expect a builder to build your house with a spoon! They have the right tools to help them do the job better, faster and more efficiently. To implement Kaizen or Continuous Improvement, you also need to equip your staff with the job tools. Look here at our blog about the best improvement tools’ features to assist you with value stream mapping.
Kaizen is an integral part of any organization’s culture. It can be used as a tool to improve processes within organizations. Still, it has been proven that companies who use Kaizen in their daily operations can increase productivity by up to 30% per year. Would you like those sorts of results?
What is the Kaizen process?
There are many different versions of the Kaizen process, either more or less in-depth, but we believe the core elements of the kaizen process are these:
Identify the opportunities and targets
Identify the problem to be solved and any strategic goals or targets relating to the work. Provide any background information that you have available.
Plan the schedule
Agree on the attendees and dates for any events and schedule the events with the attendees. Communicate the plan and the approach you will be taking, and the goals or outcomes expected.
Understand the current situation
Understand the current situation and get a shared visualization of the current process, including the exceptions. The waiting time and exceptions have a massive impact on your processes in terms of costs and impact. An essential outcome of this exercise is the shared understanding of how the process currently works and why.
Identify waste
By mapping and understanding your current processes, you can understand which steps deliver customer or business value and which step has no value add purpose (waste). As a group, we can start to come up with ideas for new designs based on the understanding of the As-Is process and its waste.
Analyze the cause and identify corrective action
With this step, we dive deeper into the processes before improving them. We have identified the waste but not necessarily the root cause. Here we can look deeper at those elements of our processes and understand why. As Taiichi Ohno says, “Ask ‘why’ 5 times about every matter” really understand the causes and then start to redesign your processes. You will then be able to compare your current and future state process and identify benefits (at least you do if you have the right tools!)
Implement corrective action
Time to take the next step and test your hypothesis. We need to put it into action. Ideally, you test these changes in a small scale test to validate your thinking. Run your tests and measure the outcomes. Now we need to understand those results and what they mean.
Evaluate the result
We have tried something, and the results are measured. A pivotal point in the process where we may choose to move onto the next step or start another iteration. What do the results demonstrate?
Have we met our strategic objectives with these results?
Have we solved the problems we set out to solve?
How do the results look against our expected savings?
If the results are promising and on track, we will now move on to implementing the change. Results not as expected or further learning and hypotheses to test, then let us take this new learning and return to our analysis and problem-solving.
Standardize and follow up
You now need to standardize and document the new procedures to be implemented. You may well already have the documented as an output of your original analysis work. All employees should undergo training to become fully aware of new standard work procedures. The whole organization needs to be aware of the changes so that everyone is on the same page.
Don’t forget any additional learning that can inform future Kaizen work. Time to follow up any loose ends and feed them forward to inform the next iteration.
It is essential to schedule a review at an appropriate timeline to evaluate the impact and results of the full implementation. This activity can also trigger another iteration of the improvement or improvement sprint.
What is PDCA or PDSA?
PDCA and its variations are a series of iterative cycles used by organizations to improve any process. The acronym stands for Plan, Do, Check, Act. Dr W Edwards Deming first introduced it in the 1950s to bring about change within the Japanese industry. He believed it could help companies become more efficient and effective.
The PDCA cycle is an essential tool because it helps you identify what needs changing to make improvements. In this chapter, we will look at how to use the PDCA cycle with your business processes. We’ll also show you some examples of how other businesses have applied the PDCA cycle successfully. In specific organizations like health, PDSA is preferred as a framework with the check being replaced by study.
Combining the Kaizen Process and PDCA
The Kaizen process is a continuous improvement method that has been used for decades in manufacturing. PDCA is an iterative cycle that can be used to improve any process. All the elements of the Kaizen process fit within the PDCA cycle.
How it all fits together
In the diagram below, we show how Kaizen fits within the PDCA process.
Kaizen is also used in conjunction with the 5S methodology, especially in manufacturing processes.
5S (methodology)
The 5 S’s are a set of management tools that can be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. Kaoru Ishikawa coined the term “The Mind of the Manufacturing Engineer”, published in 1956, but it is now widely known as the Toyota Production System or TPS. Many other companies, including GE, IBM, Motorola, Nissan Motor Company, Sony Corporation, and others, have adopted it.
What is 5S?
5S is a system for organizing spaces so work can be performed efficiently, effectively, and safely. This system focuses on putting everything where it belongs and keeping the workplace clean, which makes it easier for people to do their jobs without wasting time or risking injury.
Source: 5stoday.com
Read the other parts of the Beginners Guide To Kaizen
Kaizen is also used in conjunction with the 5S methodology, especially in manufacturing processes.
