Kaizen Continuous improvement is known in Japan as lean. Literally, it means "better change." One of the fundamental tenets of the Toyota Production System is kaizen (TPS). Lean Management has its roots in TPS. You will frequently hear the words kaizen and hansei combined. The idea that mistakes are okay as long as you learn from them is embodied by Hansei. After all, you can't get better if you can't determine whether something could be working better or not at all.
Where does Kaizen Lean come from?
Kaizen Lean is often considered a bundle of tools that can be applied. However, the origins of Lean at Toyota demonstrate that there is much more to it. Innovation has always been Toyota’s strength. And in order to innovate, employees have to be allowed to learn. Learning from mistakes ensures that situations are approached differently the next time. And if you subsequently have an organization in which the lessons learnt are shared and adopted by other employees, you can constantly improve. Kaizen is this continuous improvement as a series of small steps. When making improvements, it is important to determine the root cause of a problem. This is done with the help of the 5 X WHY? principle. This is a very simple principle: by constantly asking the “why question”, you determine the root cause of a problem.
How do you apply Kaizen to your own organization?
What exactly can you do with Kaizen Lean in your organization? A good example of an application is the Kaizen workshop. Before this workshop, a process to be improved is selected. The following steps are taken during the Kaizen workshop:
- Determine who the customer is in this process (internal & external)
- Chart the current process by – amongst others – physically keeping track of the process
- Use creative working methods (e.g. four-blockers) in order to devise solutions for the new operational process
- Create an implementation approach in subgroups
- Perform a Plan-Do-Check-Act on unfinished implementation actions
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