What is Kaizen, and why is it important for your business?
WHAT IS KAIZEN?
Kaizen, a Japanese term meaning “change for the better,” is also known as continuous improvement. It is about making small, incremental, commonsense, low-cost, and low-risk changes that lead to significant long-term benefits. Businesses that embrace Kaizen create more value, eliminate waste, and improve productivity and quality, leading to higher customer satisfaction and a more competitive advantage in the marketplace.
“All of management’s efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customer satisfaction.”
Kaizen is a process-oriented way of thinking. Its success is achieved by involving everyone everywhere, promoting teamwork and creativity to find efficient ways of working without spending much money, and encouraging the use of the resources you already have to make improvements. When we look at processes, problem areas are often denoted as a Kaizen burst, where there is an opportunity for improvement or a “change for good.”
THE KAIZEN PROCESS — PDSA
Kaizen is intended for small, rapid changes and uses the PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) problem-solving process to eliminate non-value-added activities in an iterative model or learning cycle.
Plan: Clarify the problem and understand its root cause. Identify the goal and target for improvement and devise an action plan to achieve the target.
Do: Implement the plan at a small scale.
Study: Study the results. Did it bring planned improvement? What did you learn? What went wrong?
Act: Adopt the change and standardize the new procedure or repeat the cycle.
“Small actions are at the heart of kaizen. By taking steps so tiny that they seem trivial or even laughable, you’ll sail calmly past obstacles that have defeated you before. Slowly – but painlessly! – you’ll cultivate an appetite for continued success and lay down a permanent new route to change.”
THE BENEFITS OF A KAIZEN CULTURE
Increased efficiency.
Higher quality.
More engaged workforce.
Lowers resistance to change.
Get to the root cause of problems faster.
Improves organizational performance and customer satisfaction.
Breaks down silos and enhances communication and collaboration.
Improves company culture.
CONCLUSION
A great way to start with a continuous improvement culture is with a Kaizen event workshop. A skilled facilitator leads a Kaizen workshop to guide your team through an improvement process. Learn more here!
