In the Japanese language ‘Kaizen’ means ‘continuous improvement’ — from ‘kai’ meaning change or to make better and ‘Zen’ meaning ‘good’.
The philosophy of Kaizen comes out of the Toyota Way, a Quality manufacturing approach that grew Toyota into one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world.
The goal of Kaizen is to create a workplace with energy and vitality which respects people, provides them with the will to strive, and by doing so, enhances feelings of self-worth.
What Is The Real Work People Should Be Doing In The Workplace?
According to the Kaizen approach, people are at work not just to supply their labour, but also to use their creativity to improve the way things are done.
Continuous small improvements (Kaizen) add up to major benefits: faster delivery, lower costs and greater customer satisfaction.
Tasks are made simpler and easier, speed and efficiency is increased, processes are re-engineered, a safe work environment is maintained and product quality is constantly improved.
The overarching purpose of Kaizen is to create a vibrant workplace with each individual making a contribution.
How to Apply Kaizen In The Workplace
1. Identify Problems To Solve
Ask everyone to look around their own work area to discover small problems. At the same time, consider one possible way to resolve this problem.
Kaizen is not just about finding a problem; it’s being creative to come up with a possible solution.
Submit that problem — with possible solution — to the Kaizen Committee. They will meet to consider the problem and suggested solutions and come up with another perhaps more elegant, solution. That committee has authority to take action.
2. Kaizen Board
Under kaizen, all staff are empowered to locate gaps, inefficiencies, and offer suggestions for improvement.
Better than an anonymous suggestion box that people mostly ignore or an invisible online document on your intranet is to place a physical kaizen board in a central area to allow people to add ideas. If you search on the web for the search term, ‘Kaizen board’, you’ll see plenty of examples; but essentially, it’s a notice board with four headings:
| Ideas | To Do | Doing | Done |
Make the board colourful. People are attracted to add fresh ideas to the board and can stay up to date with what the Kaizen committee is doing. Make it easy for people to make suggestions; then get back to them with a response. Include a ‘hall of fame’ area to display quick wins as they occur, with ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos. Recognise the individual who came up with the idea by adding their photo.
Alternatively have an Ideas Board with four segments:
| Low Effort / High Benefit | High Effort / High Benefit | Low Effort / Low Benefit | High Effort / Low Benefit |
3. Kaizen Committee
A Kaizen Committee can be made up of five to ten team members drawn from different levels of the organisation who are each passionate about change and improvement.
The committee meets weekly for no more than an hour to discuss ideas for improvement from staff and take action to improve the situation.
You can call this group any name you like e.g. ‘Process Improvement Group’, ‘Reinvention Team’.
4. Kaizen Report
A Kaizen report is short and simple. It summarises before and after.
Before: we had this problem.
We took this action.
Effect: it became a little better.
5. Be A Problem-Solver
Toyota once used on their car-making assembly line the Andon cord, an emergency cable made of thin nylon rope hanging on hooks. The first pull summoned team leaders to see if they could fix the problem without stopping the line. An upbeat tune played at the same time. If it couldn’t be fixed on the spot, a second pull on the Andon cord stopped the assembly-line to allow time to correct the problem. A final pull on the cord started the line again. The Andon cord became a symbol of Toyota’s focus on quality and was copied by other auto manufacturers.
Eventually, in a spirit of continuous improvement, the Andon cord was replaced by wireless buttons. But take inspiration from Toyota’s assembly line Andon cord and build a culture of stopping to fix problems instead of continuing to ignore bottlenecks or inefficiencies. Empower people to locate a problem worth fixing.
Everyone can become a problem-solver. The challenge of looking for ways to improve makes work interesting, at the same time benefits the organisation.
Kaizen Their Job
Ask people to kaizen their job by continuously asking themselves, ‘How can we do this differently?’
Looking for customised Kaizen Continuous Improvement training at your workplace?
How open is your organisation to embracing new methods or technologies to improve service, workflow or teamwork?
Do your people have a continuous improvement mindset to proactively search for ways to improve things are done.
Want them to cultivate a Marginal Gains mindset to continuously improve every little thing by 1%?
Discuss with us how we can help improve your team’s ability to embrace new, improved ways of doing things.
Visit our Kaizen Continuous Improvement training web page.
