Kaizen..... المحاضرة الثالثة

Kaizen:

The way of continuous improvement

Translation of Kaizen:

Kaizen is a Japanese term that means gradual and continuous improvement.
‘Kai' means ‘continuous’.
‘Zen' means improvement.
The same Japanese word Kaizen that is pronounced as 'Gai San' in Chinese means:
‘Gai’ means ‘the action to correct’;
‘San’ means ‘good’ or ‘benefit’.

History of Kaizen

1950’s – Toyota implements quality circles, which results in development of unique Toyota Production System.
In doing so, quality was inspected at every stage of production rather than checking the completed product for defects

Meaning of Kaizen

Kaizen is an on-going, never-ending improvement process.
Kaizen is based upon team problem solving approach to identify problems which are evaluated, ideas generated and solutions implemented.
Kaizen philosophy underlines that waste can be turned into profit if it is eliminated and employees are encouraged to participate in improvement process.
Kaizen means improvements without spending too much money.
Kaizen means involving everyone from top managers to workers.
Kaizen means using much common sense.

Muda, Gemba & Teian

‘Muda’ means waste and is any non-value adding activity, that can result in direct money loss or decrease in efficiency and customer satisfaction.
‘Gemba’ means real place where valu-adding activities to satisfy customer needs are carried out.
‘Teian’ means suggestion submitting system.
In order to eliminate waste, we have to:
go to ‘gemba’;
observe;
recognize ‘muda’;
take steps to remove it using ‘teian’.

Wastes in Service Industry

1. Errors in documents.
2. Transport of documents.
3. Doing unnecessary work not requested.
4. Waiting for the next process step.
5. Process of getting approvals.
6. Unnecessary motions.
7. Backlog in work queues.
8. Underutilized employees.

Principle of 5s’( Housekeeping)

Seire – Sorting out. Distinguishing between necessary and unnecessary items in gemba and discard the latter.
Seiton – Systematic arrangements. Arranging all items remaining after seiri in an orderly manner.
Seiso – Spic and span. Keeping machines and working environments clean, this helps to see further damages.
Seiketsu – Standardizing. Extending the concept of cleanliness in a set of standards and continuously practice the above three steps.
Shitsuke – Self-discipline. Building self-discipline and educating people in maintaining standards.

Kaizen – Benefits

Reduced wastes in areas such as inventory, waiting times, transportation, worker motion, employee's skills, over production, excess quality and in processes.
Improvements in space utilization, product quality, use of capital, communications, production capacity and employee retention.
Large capital investments avoided.
Solving problems at their source.
It's not unusual for Kaizen to result in 25 to 30 suggestions per employee, per year.
90% of suggestions may be implemented.
For example, in 1999 at one of Toyota’s U.S. plant, 7,000 Toyota employees submitted over 75,000 suggestions, of which 99% were implemented.

Kaizen vs. Innovation

Kaizen comes in small steps, conventional know-how and a lot of common sense.
Innovation comes in big steps and pursues technological breakthrough.

Kaizen is effort-based.

Innovation is investment-based
Kaizen constantly revises process to check results consistency with targets.
Innovation looks for results only.