Kaizen

What Is Kaizen?

Kaizen is an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small and ongoing positive changes can lead to substantial improvements. Kaizen approach is also based on cooperation and commitment. Furthermore, it stands in contrast to approaches that use radical or top-down changes to realize this transformation. Kaizen was originally developed in the manufacturing industry to reduce defects, increase productivity, eliminate waste, promote employee motivation and accountability, and also encourage innovation.

Kaizen is a combination of two Japanese words that together mean “good change” or “healing”. However, Kaizen has changed over time and started to mean “continuous improvement” by being associated with lean methodology and principles.

What Are the 10 Principles of Kaizen?

Running Kaizen across a company requires activating the right mindset. In this context, there are 10 principles related to Kaizen:
1. Let go of assumptions
2. When it comes to solving problems, be proactive
3. Never accept the status quo
4. Drop the perfectionism mentality and enter an iterative, adaptive understanding of change
5. Look for more solutions as you find mistakes
6. Create an environment where everyone can feel empowered to get everyone to contribute
7. Do not accept the obvious issues. Instead, ask “why” five times to get to the root cause, also called the “five why” method
8. Ask more people for information and opinions
9. Use your creativity to come up with small improvements that cost less
10. Always keep improving

How Kaizen Works?

Kaizen is based on the belief that everything can be enhanced and nothing is the same as before. Kaizen understanding is carried out through a cycle. Let’s talk about this cycle:
• Get employees involved: Get your employees involved in solving and identifying problems.
• Find problems: Make a list of issues and potential opportunities using common feedback from all employees involved.
• Create a solution: Encourage employees to come up with creative solutions by encouraging all kinds of ideas.
• Test the solution: With everyone participating in the presentation, apply the winning solution chosen in the previous step.
• Analyze the results: Check progress and choose who will be the point of contact.
• If the results are positive, ensure that the solution is adopted across the organization.
• The final stage is the repetition of all steps.

What Are Types of Kaizen Events?

While the overall aim of Kaizen is widespread cultural exchange, certain activities have developed in this context to initiate efforts or to focus on a specific set of issues. In the context of companies in the West, these intense efforts to make rapid changes to achieve a short-term goal are often included in Kaizen efforts. There are many different names associated with Kaizen events, including Kaizen blitz, Kaizen burst, Kaizen workshop, focused improvement workshop, continuous improvement workshop, and rapid process workshop. These events may be based on a variety of tools or may also focus specifically on specific areas such as the 5S framework, total efficient maintenance and value stream mapping.

Kaizen 5S Framework

The 5S framework is a critical part of the Kaizen system and provides an ideal physical workplace. Since the original is in Japanese, it consists of 5 words starting with s, but this situation changes of course in its translation. Briefly, these are as follows:

Organize:

Separate the workplace items as necessary and unnecessary, and then get rid of the unnecessary.

Create Orderliness:

Arrange items in the workplace so that they are most convenient for people to access.

Cleanliness:

Always keep your workplace clean and tidy.

Standardized Cleaning:

Systematize workplace cleaning practices.

Discipline:

Always keep up the effort put in.

What Are the Advantages of Kaizen?

We can list the advantages of Kaizen as follows:
• Thanks to Kaizen’s understanding of improvement, the efforts spent on any subject are not wasted, on the contrary, it creates a more moderate approach to change.
• Kaizen encourages detailed review of processes to reduce errors and waste of any kind.
• It minimizes surveillance and inspection needs thanks to its lower error rate.
• Employee morale always remains high as Kaizen motivates people with a sense of value and purpose.
• It increases teamwork as employees reflect on issues beyond the specifics of their departments.
• It encourages improvements in both the short and long term.

What Are the Disadvantages of Kaizen?

We can list the disadvantages of kaizen as follows:
• In terms of companies with regionalism and closed communication cultures, companies may need to focus primarily on cultural changes in order to create a receptive environment.
• Short-term Kaizen events can create an unsustainable burst of excitement in the long run because they are short and short-lived.

Examples of Kaizen

Toyota has been one of the most famous companies for using Kaizen. At the same time, Lockheed Martin, Ford Motor Company, Pixar Animation Studios are examples of companies that use Kaizen.