PRINCIPLE OF KAIZEN – Benefits of Kaizen Philosophy

PRINCIPLE OF KAIZEN

The two key features of kaizen are incremental and continuous improvement and involvement of the entire workforce in that process. The workforce, even workers, need to participate in producing small but frequent changes by making suggestions for improvement in both process and product. Beyond that, the logical structure of the concept of kaizen, the precise relationship among its tools, and concrete measures and sequences adopted on the factory floor, are difficult to pin down since there are many different schools of teaching that emphasize different aspects and tools of kaizen relative to others. Even among excellent companies, Toyota‟s way is different from Honda‟s way, and the Panasonic philosophy is quite distinct from Canon‟s.

See also: Kaizen Continuous Improvement -Definition, Kaizen Process

Principles of Kaizen philosophy :

• Continually improve
• No idea is too small.
• Identify, report, and solve individual problems.
• Focus change on common sense, low-cost, and low-risk improvements, not major innovations.
• Collect, verify, and analyze data to enact change.
• A major source of quality defects is problems in the process.
• Decreasing variability in the process is vital to improving quality.
• Identify and decrease non–value-added steps.
• Every interaction is between a customer and a supplier.
• Empower the worker to enact change.
• All ideas are addressed and responded to in some way.
• Decrease waste.
• Address the work place with good housekeeping discipline.

Kaizen Benefits

1. Kaizen Reduces Waste- like inventory waste, time waste, workers motion
2. Kaizen Improves space utilization, product quality
3. Results in higher employee morale and job satisfaction, and lower turn-over.
4. Toyota is well-known as one of the leaders in using Kaizen. In 1999 at one U.S. plant, 7,000 Toyota employees submitted over 75,000 suggestions, of which 99% were implemented.
5. Eliminating processes that cause human fatigue.
6. Improvement in individual people capabilities.
7. Improvements for new products (ideas)
8. Improving systems and processes
9. Achieving maximum efficiency and quality
10. An open management style that allows questioning of the existing systems and processes
11. Machine capability improvement (minimum down-time)
12. Striving for continuous improvement at all levels
13. Quality improvement.
14. Improvement in customer service and customer relations.
15. Improvement in production aids (fixtures, tools, etc.).

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