This guide teaches you the meaning of Kaizen and why it’s important; its transformative benefits; its use cases in various industries, and high-value tips and best practices to optimize your career and company’s bottom line.
Kaizen’s (改善) meaning comes from the Japanese word that means “a change for the better or continuous improvement”—Kai means change, and Zen means better. This is why Kaizen is a management strategy that can be used for process improvement and corporate restructuring, but it can also help tackle everyday work tasks. It’s a powerful tool for creating meaningful change in your business, and it can help you find new ways to make your customers happier, more efficient, and more profitable.
The Kaizen concept was popularized in 1987 by Japanese businessman Masaaki Imai. In his book “Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success”, Imai describes how Japanese companies have been able to thrive economically even after World War II due to their focus on continuous improvement and employee empowerment.
The book was so influential that it helped spawn an entire movement towards Kaizen continuous improvement within organizations. In fact, many companies still use Imai's theories today.
At its core, the benefits of Kaizen for company owners, managers, and employees include: improved employee morale, reduced costs, and expenses, increased revenue and profit margins, reduced product defects, and improved customer satisfaction scores.
Here are the more specific benefits across various departments:
1. A step by step guide on how to run a Kaizen audit
2. The best industries where Kaizen use cases are most useful
3. The five principles of Kaizen
4. The PROs and CONs of Kaizen
5. The best tips and best practices to optimize your Kaizen strategy
Kaizen helps business owners maximize their resources by making their operations lean. But you’re probably asking, “How is Kaizen really used today among employees? Who can give a Kaizen audit? Is Kaizen a Six Sigma tool? And how do I run a Kaizen session?”
Let’s answer all of these pertinent questions below:
First, a Kaizen is used to encourage managers to work together toward common goals through cooperation rather than competition. In fact, Kaizen principles are accomplished by identifying and solving problems through small, incremental changes made in a process or product. As a result, the company nurtures a culture of teamwork, commitment, discipline, and collaborative improvement.
Kaizen sessions are then meetings where people come together to identify areas in which they can improve their processes and products. The importance of Kaizen in achieving this can only be realized if it’s done right.
Here are the essential Kaizen steps to include in your custom-tailored workflows:
Being able to pin down the reason for a problem before you make a decision is key, so the first step for a good Kaizen is to identify each pressing issue. Ask everyone involved in the project to gather around and ask them what they think about the current situation or problem. Afterward, identify the pain points. Pain points are problems that your employees have identified as things they want to be changed in their work using a Kaizen strategy.
They don't have to be huge or even particularly serious—they can be something as simple as not having enough time during the day to eat lunch without feeling rushed, or getting stuck in traffic each morning on the way to work.
This is the step where you brainstorm solutions together with your team members. Don't be afraid to get creative here—you never know where inspiration might come from. Write down several solutions for each pain point. Each solution should be small and actionable; for example, if an employee feels like she/he/they doesn't have enough time to eat lunch without feeling rushed, she/he/they could try taking her lunch at 11:45 instead of noon. This way, she can have more time to eat and less time rushing around looking for food at the end of her break—this might also make it easier on everyone else who takes their break at noon.
The point is you should make sure in this step that you create a more positive, improvement-centered working environment for employees and managers alike. This empowers managers to identify problems early on and drive a Kaizen continuous improvement and innovation with their employees. Let them think about everything they could do differently—even if it seems crazy at first glance—and let them write down all those ideas on paper. Then prioritize them based on which ones seem most viable for solving your problem.
Don't forget the importance of their mental health in this regard, you may be surprised how much the work atmosphere and performance changes when this area is properly monitored. You can read more about it in our mental health assessment article.
Kaizen is created to have more opportunities for growth and development by helping employees identify areas they could be doing better and giving them time to work on those skills and abilities. This can best be honed when management delegates tasks accordingly.
To do this, have employees vote on which solution they think would work best based on data and their understanding of their specific roles. When everyone understands their role in the company, they're more likely to work together as a team rather than feeling isolated from each other. This also leads to employee autonomy and higher morale in the company since this makes them feel like they have each other's backs when times get tough. As a result, employees turn into leaders who can teach others how to do their jobs better.
Before implementing any changes implemented during a Kaizen session, make sure that there's an objective way of determining progress. Install metrics to see whether or not those changes were successful. Determine and collect all the data in order to answer questions or solve problems. This may include things like sales figures or customer satisfaction scores. Doing so not only solves the pressing issues but also creates a culture of constant growth across all departments.
An example of a Kaizen strategy is purchasing stations that are flow-oriented. This type of Kaizen focuses on removing waste from individual unloading time at a station. The result is an improved customer experience since employees can focus on quality instead of the amount of time they spend unloading each product.
There are three pillars of a Kaizen strategy or audit: housekeeping, waste elimination, and standardization.
Housekeeping refers to any kind of project-related cleaning up or organizing that can reduce unnecessary movement by creating clear paths for employees to follow. For example, if you have a warehouse where there are multiple workstations for different jobs, make sure each station has everything an employee needs within reach so they don't have to walk around too much just to get supplies.
Waste elimination involves eliminating anything that isn't necessary for completing a certain task or meeting a specific goal. For example, if you're working on a project for one client and then another client asks for a similar project and you didn’t use a pre-formatted template, this could be considered a waste.
Standardization means that all employees should be familiar with the same processes so they can get things done more quickly without having to check with multiple people or ask questions about how things should be done.
For more information about these pillars, visit the Universal Class module on Kaizen.
These are the major industries where the use of Kaizen can have dramatic results:
Kaizen and 5S are two different practices that are often confused by executives, managers, and employees. The Kaizen continuous improvement strategy encourages employees to make small changes in an effort to improve efficiency and productivity. 5S is a workplace organization system that organizes your workspace into sections based on its use.
The 5S of Kaizen is a set of guidelines that can help organizations improve their work processes and productivity. This process is based on the premise that if you can organize your workplace, it will make everything easier for you to do your job.
The 5S stands for:
For more comprehensive information about 5S, visit the complete guide of 5s System.
The five principles of Kaizen are:
1. Know your Customer: You have to know your customers' wants and needs in order to understand how they'll react to changes you make.
2. Let it Flow: When you come up with a new idea for improving the way things are done at your company, try not to get stuck in the details or bogged down by bureaucracy. Instead, focus on getting things done with powerful results.
3. Go To Gemba: "Gemba" is Japanese for "real place", and so Gemba-Kaizen means going out into the field to see what's happening firsthand in the real workplace, rather than relying on reports from others who aren't able to see everything that's happening at once.
4. Empower People: Empowering people means giving employees and managers the authority they need so they can make decisions without having to ask permission every time something comes up. This should also let them know what their complete responsibilities are so they know what's expected of them within the company.
5. Be Transparent: Performance and improvements should be tangible using reliable and verifiable data.
For a comprehensive detailed study, read the complete literature from Kaizen Developers themselves.
There are four different kinds of Kaizen you can implement in your company: Kaizen Teian, Kaizen Events, Kaikaku, and Kakushin.
Kaizen has helped improve many companies’ operations. However, there are also some drawbacks, but reliable data still suggests that the advantages still outweigh them. Here are the PROs and CONs that managers, employees, and business owners must not dismiss about initiating Kaizen strategies in their workplace inspection templates:
You're probably thinking: "How hard can one execute the various types of Kaizen?” After all, if you're working in any industry, it's likely that you're very familiar already with the ins and outs of your company’s workflows.
That might be true, but the problem is that it's easy to get complacent. To avoid the costly mistakes in complacency and faulty execution of a Kaizen strategy, here are some dos and don'ts, safety tips, and best practices for quality managers and employees to follow:
To sum it up, the Kaizen continuous improvement is not just about doing things better but it's also about always aiming for peak efficiency in all operations in the business. The best way to ensure this happens is through clear explanations and regular reminders of what Kaizen means and why it's important. You can do this efficiently and effectively with a digital kaizen tool.
In other words, if you're ready to take your business or career to the next level, Kaizen is a good strategy to start. It’s not only a great way to improve productivity and the overall performance of your business, but it also ensures that everyone in your organization is geared towards constant growth— from large companies to small businesses, or even individual employees who are looking for ways to do their jobs better and advance their career targets faster and failure-free.
Learn the complete Kaizen strategies and other training modules from its official website HERE.
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