Kaizen involves every employee in making change--in most cases small, incremental changes. It focuses on identifying problems at their source, solving them at their source and changing standards to ensure the problem stays solved. It's not unusual for Kaizen to result in 25 to 30 suggestions per employee, per year, and to have over 90% of those implemented. For example, Toyota is well-known as one of the leaders in using Kaizen. In 1999 at one U.S. plant, 7,000 Toyota employees submitted over 75,000 suggestions, of which 99% were implemented. These continual small improvements add up to major benefits. They result in improved productivity, improved quality, better safety, faster delivery, lower costs, and greater customer satisfaction. On top of these benefits to the company, employees working in Kaizen-based companies generally find work to be easier and more enjoyable—resulting in higher employee moral and job satisfaction, and lower turn-over. With every employee looking for ways to make improvements, you can expect results such as:

1. Kaizen reduces waste in areas such as inventory, waiting times, transportation, worker motion, employee skills, over production, excess quality and in processes.

2. Kaizen improves space utilization, product quality, use of capital, communications, production capacity and employee retention.

3. Kaizen provides immediate results. Instead of focusing on large capital intensive improvements,

4. Kaizen focuses on creative investments that continually solve large numbers of small problems. Large capital projects and major changes will still be needed, and Kaizen will also improve the capital projects process, but the realpower of Kaizen is in the on-going process of continually making small improvements that improve processes and reduce waste.

Source: http://vsrdjournals.com/MBA/Issue/2011_5_May/6_Imran_Ahmad_Khan_Research_Communication_May_2011.pdf

Thank you Rajeev for the overview of Kaizen process and excellent reference that provides complete details for its application. Kaizen is like a low hanging fruit to get very good benefits with very little investment. Here is a case study in Environment Protection Agency.

Office of Inspector General (OIG) Correction Action Tracking Process in EPA after Kaizen

• 86% reduction in number of handoffs (from 92 to 13)

• 68% reduction in time to process an OIG Action (from 324 hours to 104 hours)

• 62% reduction in total number of steps (from 16 to 6)

http://www.epa.gov/lean/government/epa-initiatives/ocfo-casestudy.htm

Here is a case study from System Quality Consulting in "a Machine shop with 65 employees about machinig a complex aerospace part, with 18 operations was taking a minimum of 16 weeks, and at times as much as 20 weeks to deliver. The company was making four other, similar parts for other customers and all were taking over 16 weeks.

The Approach: Eight operators worked for one week. Event was preceded by three days of prework.

The Goal: To reduce the time from 16 weeks to less than 8 weeks.

The Results: The next time the part was made, the manufacturing time was reduced to 12 weeks, the time after that, 9 weeks and from then on, the part was consistently made in 7 weeks or less. Within six months, the four other, similar parts were all being made in less than 7 weeks.

The company determined the payback period for the event and all related costs to be less than four weeks. As a result of improved delivery performance, four of the five product customers increased their orders."

http://www.systemsquality.com/id21.html

There are many benefits we can gain from the implementation of Kaizen. Kaizen can reduces waste in areas such as inventory, waiting times, transportation, worker motion, employee skills, over production, excess quality and in processes. Kaizen also can Improve product quality, use of capital, production capacity and employee retention.

KAIZEN MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY is the paper from a Serb! I wonder if it is relevant dear @Nageswara. Here is a quote " Kaizen will reduce costs, space requirements and cycle time. Of course, since it is continuous, as

soon as one set of problems are solved, new problems occur which must be overcome. By going

through this process, the production system becomes stronger and stronger. The results are:

1. 65% reduction in work-in-process

2. 50% reduction in manufacturing space

3. 45% improvement in throughput time (lead-time)"

Full paper is attached!

Thank you Prof Mahfuz. Kaizen can be used in all areas and can continuously improve the efficiency in smaller increments. Also it means solving problems bit by bit. It gives the control to the people who are directly involved in the process.

Thank you Dr Ljubomir for the excellent paper. It presented in the form of guidelines:

1. Discard conventional fixed ideas.

2. Think of how to do it, not why it cannot be done.

3. Do not make excuses. Start by questioning current practices.

4. Do not seek perfection. Do it right away even if it will only achieve 50% of target.

5. If you make a mistake, correct it right away.

6. Throw wisdom at a problem, not money.

7. Ask 'WHY?" five times and seek root causes.

8. Seek the wisdom of ten people rather than the knowledge of one.

9. Don't ask workers to leave their brains at the factory gate.

Very good points!

Here is fine paper which I have dig out of ResearchGate publications data base!

Article A study on construction of a kaizen case-base and its utilis...

“This paper identifies the factors that most strongly influence the sustainability of work area employee attitudes and commitment to Kaizen events based on a field study of 65 events in eight manufacturing organizations. Qualitative observations of the Kaizen events with the highest and lowest work area attitude and commitment values suggest that managers may find it beneficial to periodically hold standard work events, e.g., using a standard work event to implement techniques that may enhance the acceptance of change and may encourage employees to follow new work methods, as they may help support the critical factors of work area attitude and commitment. In addition, managers may wish to place additional emphasis on those critical factors when using Kaizen events to address quality issues. The findings also present guidelines for organizations and areas for future research.”

Wiljeana J. Glover, Jennifer A. Farris, Eileen M. Van Akenc, and Toni L. Doolend (2011) Critical success factors for the sustainability of Kaizen event human resource outcomes: An empirical study, Int. J. Production Economics, 132 (2011) 197–213.

Thank you Dr Kamal. That is a phenomenal savings. Here are a few examples of hospital Kaizen applications.

http://www.healthitoutcomes.com/doc/kaizen-the-key-to-lean-healthcare-0001

http://www.hckaizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/CHAPTER-1-Healthcare-Kaizen-by-Mark-Graban-Summer-2013-Smaller1.pdf

https://jica-ri.jica.go.jp/publication/assets/Scaling%20Up%20South-South%20and%20Triangular%20Cooperation_PartII-Case2_JICA-RI.pdf

Dear Nageswara

Over and above the benefits pointed out by the excellent posts above, when kaizen is practiced sincerely, it becomes an attitude, an organizational habit, a way to attain the pinnacle of excellence,a gate to peak of professional excellence, and a part of organizational culture.

All these features can contribute to competitive advantage of the adopter.. I believe in kaizen, which has helped me immensely in promoting readability of my academic work.

http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=11&sid=70864d1e-243d-4ee4-a5d1-27a4e4294a1e%40sessionmgr113&hid=122&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=bth&AN=92897662

Dear Prof.  Nageswara,

 The Sino-Japanese word "kaizen" simply means "good change", with no inherent meaning of either "continuous" or "philosophy" in Japanese dictionaries or in everyday use.

"Kaizen is based on the philosophical belief that everything can be improved: Some organizations look at a process and see that it's running fine; Organizations that follow the principle of Kaizen see a process that can be improved. This means that nothing is ever seen as a status quo – there are continuous efforts to improve which result in small, often imperceptible, changes over time. These incremental changes add up to substantial changes over the longer term, without having to go through any radical innovation. It can be a much gentler and employee-friendly way to institute the changes that must occur as a business grows and adapts to its changing environment"

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_97.htm

The following link compares continuous Improvement (Kaizen) Culture in Japan and in the West

http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/culture_corporate_kaizen_8elements.html

Best regards,

BAN

Fine reading dear @Behrouz, 8 elements for Continuous Improvement Culture, 7 conditions for KAIZEN and 13 tips for Lean Enterprise! Thanks for link!

Kaizen is all about reducing costs. We have been able to cut some unnecessary costs and have made some improvement in cost management.

Dear Umesh

Reducing cost is only one of the goals of kaizen. Literally, it means continuous improvement. It postulates that there is incessant scope for improving processes, which may be related to reducing cost, improving quality, enhancing efficiency in relation to wastage, reducing rejection, or any other type of improvement in the product.

That is true Debi. Here is a very good representation of Kaizen Graphic from

http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/mgmt_kaizen_tqc_main.html

Kaizen Time

In some Canon plants, the foremen are told to set aside the half-hour as Kaizen time – time to do nothing but thinking improvement in the workshop.

The foremen use this period to identify problems and work on Kaizen programs. Factories are advised not to hold meetings during this 30-minute period, and foremen should not even answer the telephone then.

http://www.1000advices.com/guru/processes_kaizen_canon_ps.html

Here is the presentation on the Project on Dissemination of Quality/Productivity Improvement (KAIZEN) Practice for Small and Medium Enterprises in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan by Japan International Cooperation Agency

http://www.jedco.gov.jo/joomla/images/pre.kaizen/2%20Example%20of%20KAIZEN.pdf

Dear Nageswara,

Wow, what a lively topic! I hope my perspective adds value. I have been fortunately to see the benefits of various business improvement methodologies since the 1980’s. I worked in consumer products manufacturing and we executed lean manufacturing well ahead of our peers. The plant improved productivity by 8% (increased volume & flat costs) within 1 year. Later I lead my own deployment and increased throughput by 11% within 6 months with the lean methodology. My first six sigma project was in the mid 2000’s and it was a pain because culture was an obstacle. Today, I have adopted the Lean Sigma methodology (use of data & quick adoption).

Over the many years, industries and countries I have discovered one consistent theme. Executive and middle management commitment determines a Lean Sigma deployment success. The entire management team must be aligned or expect a less than average performance. Attached are several authors who agree.

I hope I added value.

Best regards,

John W.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263786312001627

Thank you john for your experience. It is of great value. The abstract of your paper

"Stakeholder behavior and stakeholder management are key success factors within project portfolio management (PPM). This empirical study of 197 project portfolios investigates the effect of the intensity of engagement (IoE) of portfolio-internal stakeholders on project portfolio success. We show that the effect of stakeholders is phase-specific and that role clarity as a measure of PPM maturity affects the nature of the relationship between the IoE of stakeholders and portfolio success. The effects of the IoE of senior managers on success are not clearly positive with regard to strategic portfolio structuring and are even negative in operative portfolio steering in established PPM systems. In immature PPM systems, line managers tend to take advantage of their position in resource management. Surprisingly, the influence of portfolio managers in portfolio steering is insignificant. Altogether, this paper shows the diverse effect of the IoE of stakeholders on portfolio success. This study enriches project research by applying stakeholder theory to the project portfolio context and offers practical guidance for further professionalizing PPM."

Kaizen approach is instead of making large changes that may require significant amounts of investment and risk, make process improvements without

1) adding people to the process,

2) adding space to the process, and

3) without spending any money to implement the change (this last one is usually the hardest for companies follow).

http://www.gembutsu.com/lean_faq.html#4

http://www.gembutsu.com/system_files/library/24.pdf

Dears, I have tried to share my experience in developing country, Ethiopia, in Kaizen application. I want to get your experience in the challenges.

Kaizen philosophy has started to apply in different context and obtained a wide acceptance in African context recently. Especially, In my county, Ethiopia, There is massive movement in different sectors by government initiatives. According to the paper presented by Prof. Daniel, the application of Kaizen has obtained the following benefits from the Kaizen projects were:

• Capacity utilization improvement

• Profits improvement

• Waste minimization

• Costs reduction

• Down time minimization

• Cycle time reduction

Some of qualitative results obtained are:

• Clean working environment created

• Teamwork and motivation of workers developed

• Health and occupational safety of workers improved

• Knowledge obtained on how to meet delivery & reduce costs

Some of quantitative results obtained are:

• Reducing costs – ETB 78,000 per annum

• Generating additional income of ETB 1.2 million per year.

• Decreasing downtime ETB 204,000 per day

• Reduction of floor space around 50%

Challenges faced in the kaizen implementation process were:

• Power is very much concentrated in the hands of top managers

• Workers motivation to improvement and change in the organizations were limited

• Awareness creation among the management and employees took much time

National dissemination of kaizen activities in Ethiopia may require:

• Kaizen needs to be publicized as a national movement

• Create enabling environment for Kaizen dissemination

• Create Kaizen day/month

• Establish Kaizen award

• Human resource development through training

• Customization of the Kaizen guidance methodology

• Standardization of Kaizen consultancy

• Integrate Kaizen in all educational systems

• Synchronization of the GTP with Kaizen projects

Please find the attached the pdf files below.

Even though this are the results what we have observed from the initial implementation are quiet promising. Different people fell that the changes will not continuous because of the less involvement of workers and the less commitment of top management. Like other improvement initiatives in developing countries Like Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering, this may fade out with short time if the government support and involvement decreased of gone for other development agenda. To continue such initiatives, what type of strategies do you suggest for the continuous application of such efforts?

Scenario

• Industrial Relations issue with existing workers
• OD Intervention - Diploma Engineers to take over operations

During then as part of Kaizen, we introduced Pictorial Work Instruction Sheets (PWIS) during the implementation of Self Managed Team. SMT comprised of Diploma Engineers in Operations-Maintenance-Quality.

Indicators

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/aSGuest82642-783148-pictorial-work-instruction-sheets-pwis/

Kaizen - Gaining the Full Benefits of Continuous Improvement is fine article with benefits described.One interesting thing about Kaizen : "Another Japanese term associated with kaizen is muda, which means waste. Kaizen is aimed at decreasing waste through eliminating overproduction, improving quality, being more efficient, having less idle time, and reducing unnecessary activities. All these translate to money savings and turn potential losses into profits."

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_97.htm

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-kaizen-philosophy-61502.html

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/steps-kaizen-event-55000.html

Ever since I taught the management course - Total Quality Management (TQM), I am very fond of TQM techniques and Statistical Quality Control.

Kaizen or Continuous  Improvement is essential for all organizations.

Best wishes, Sundar

Dear @Nageswara and friends, Kaizen is also known as the Shewhart cycle or PDCA! "For Kaizen to be effective there has to be a culture of trust between staff and managers, supported by a democratic structure and a Theory Y view of employees. Good two-way communications and a de-layered organisation would also support this approach. Nevertheless, some workers might see the demands as an extra burden rather than an opportunity and it can take time to embed Kaizen successfully into an organisation’s culture."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

http://www.tutor2u.net/business/production/kaizen-quality-circles-continuous-improvement.html

Dear Fasika Bete Georgise  ---> Thanks for your detailed mail on "Kaizen" in Ethiopia.. I have a good friend from India who now works in Defense Engineering College in Ethiopia.. I don't know where it is located at Ethiopia.. I plan to make a visit to Ethiopia to conduct a Modern Control Engineering Workshop.. My calendar is so busy.. When I get some free time, I plan to visit your country -------------> Thank you! - Sundar

I am sure many practitioners see Kaizen as a CI initiative. But in my experience in various organisations, I feel  Kaizen when embedded rightly in organisation culture brings in greater employee benefits like satisfaction through participation, sense of ownership of ideas, empowerment and exposure to organisation strategy and objectives.

Several occurrences can initiate a Kaizen event. Employee feedback is one of the most common. An employee may experience difficulty or frustration when performing a task and seek help. Another employee may offer a suggestion for something he or she would like to try to make a process easier or more consistent.

A Kaizen event can be employed in all areas of an organization, including administration, manufacturing, quality control, warehousing, shipping and receiving, maintenance, and service areas.

http://www.mmsonline.com/columns/benefits-of-a-kaizen-event