Blitz Kaizen
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Kaizen - Moving On Continuous Improvement
The word Kaizen refers to a Japanese philosophy for continuous incremental improvement. This same philosophy has been widely used by people at all levels of an organisation, be it the management level as well as the shop-floor personnel. Adopting Kaizen involves the creation of a culture of sustained continuous improvement focused on eliminating wastes in all systems and processes of an organisation. This simple, yet effective approach employs a wide variety of tools and techniques for continuous, sustained improvement and advocates the involvement of process owners and teams to engender employee commitment, morale and personal discipline.
Objectives of Kaizen
1. Elimination of waste
2. Control quality of products or processes
3. Standardisation of work
4. Delivery on time and efficient use of resources
With such improvement that relates to the key objectives, the organistion will achieve superb quality levels, greater efficiencies and higher levels of profitability.
As a methodology, Kaizen is tested and proven by Toyota in Japan. At Toyota, Kaizen usually involves local improvement within a workstation or local area and involves a small group in improving their own work environment and productivity.
When do we apply the Kaizen philosophy?
For a start, any organisation can pick up this Kaizen philosophy and start local improvement within a workstation. This initiative can be guided through by a team leader with the cooperation of the members. With such kaizen initiatives, it is hoped that such initiatives will develop a culture of continual improvements and standardisation that yields results in terms of productivity improvement.
Benefits of Kaizen
- Production lead time reduced by 20 – 70 %
- Inventory level reduced by 20 – 70 %
- Inventory cost reduced by 30 – 70 %
- Productivity increased by 2 to 3 fold
- Space Utilisation reduced by 10 – 70 %
- On Time Delivery improved to > 95 %
- Capacity increased by 10 – 70 %
- Equipment Uptime enhanced to 90 – 95 %
- Employee morale improved and turnover decreased
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