Continuous Process Improvement
Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning change (kai) to improve or for wisdom (zen). It is a life philosophy for continuous and incremental self improvement that has been applied to business and management. Because of the incremental aspect, Kaizen is used only for improvement to existing processes. It is not a methodology for introducing new processes or large scale change. It works well where there is a long-term requirement. It focuses on the people aspects of improvement, requiring some discipline and acceptance of change for improvement but can be easier to implement than other business process re-engineering methodologies where more radical changes are required in the short term which can give rise to more resistance and require more robust change management skills.
Like Six Sigma, a Kaizen culture focuses on elimination of waste in the form of any error or defect but in addition to addressing processes at base level, it also addresses Management ability to manage change and seeks to put into place a culture of continuous improvement.
It does this through focussing on teamwork, personal discipline, morale, quality circles and communications to facilitate suggestions for improvement.
Kaizen Teian
The latter, known as Kaizen Teian, or personal Kaizen, is the only part of the Kaizen culture to focus on the individual instead of a team. Even so, it does not advocate personal action to improve a process, but suggestions by individuals which will then be assessed by a team. Quite often suggestion schemes can be viewed with a certain amount of cynicism by staff, particularly if nothing seems to be taken up by management.
One way of turning this around is to have somewhere that staff can record what annoys or frustrates them - rather than them thinking of the solution themselves. These annoyances are then collected at team or department level and can be traded at that level - "My team are frustrated because you can't do this on time. If you have a look at this then we'll look at that one of yours."
Quite often silo mentalities mean that workers don't consider how easy or how hard it is for other departments to feed into the process before it passes into their team or whether their own contributions to a process may be holding things up elsewhere. Quite often there is no problem with making a small change that makes a large difference elsewhere. It wasn't done before simply because it wasn't realised that it would make a difference.
Gemba Kaizen
Gemba Kaizen uses small teams, intimately involved in sub-processes, to identify waste, inefficiencies or underused resources and then make changes to improve the sub-process. If the process was the enrolment of students, for example, the sub-process might be the processing of student fees, arrangements for IT induction or data entry to the Student Record System.
Teams who normally work together on a part of the sub-process set aside time to discuss areas for improvement at regular intervals, weekly or more frequently. Encountered problems are discussed to discover the source, alternatives identified and a change made.
Where Kaizen is focussed on the entire process with a view to larger scale improvements this is termed Flow or Kaikaku Kaizen.
