What Is Kaizen?

Have you ever thought about how small errors or glitches that seem insignificant in the production processes in companies can increase the cost? Or to what extent can simple but effective arrangements affect the process? In this article, we will try to explain to what is Kaizen and the effects of small changes made in the production process on cost and efficiency.

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Kaizen means continuous improvement, formed by a combination of words i.e. ‘Kai’ which means change and ‘zen’ which means good or better in Japanese. It’s primary purpose is to improve the process in production with small but effective changes. Kaizen is a method that prioritizes the improvement process in production, since better results depend on improving processes.

Kaizen is to take small steps every day to get better than the day before, to achieve success by ensuring continuity in a stable manner.

In this way, employees can see and understand more clearly the effects of their work and the process they apply on the result. This both increases participation and motivates employees.

While Kaizen is implemented in business life, all members of the organization, from workers to managers, take part in this development and improvement process.

The PDCA cycle is of great importance in these processes of “plan, do, check, act”.

Kaizen Implementation Process

Kaizen is the philosophy of working and developing yourself or business to do better all the time with the desire to achieve perfection. It is process-oriented, not results. In this way, improvements are permanent and effective.

The Kaizen implementation process consists of four main steps. These are: Finding the problem, planning, implementing, controlling, taking precautions. Let’s consider these steps one by one.

Problem Discovery (to be improved):

– It is decided what the problem is. As we will see in the next steps, action is taken to improve the problem.

Planning:

– In this step, the goals of recovery are determined. Economic gains should not be targeted when setting targets. It should be noted that the goal is not more profit, but more quality.

– As we say, efficiency, using time efficiently is very important here. In order to use time efficiently, daily, monthly or even annual plans should be made.

– This process will be useful in extracting cause and effect diagrams.

Do or Application:

– Recovery studies determined during the planning phase are implemented here. The plan needs to be fully implemented.

– Data is collected at every step of the way.

– If the planned improvement works cannot be carried out, the planning phase is revisited.

Check:

– If the plans are implemented correctly, if something goes wrong, the cause is found, the rescheduling is done; If there is no problem, the final stage is reached.

Act or Take Precautions:

– Make sure that the improvement is permanent.

– If necessary, checkpoints can be added to the process to ensure the continuity of the improvement.

In short, Kaizen emphasizes that our change must always be for the better and teaches us how to make this change.

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Kaizen Philosophy

Kaizen’s philosophy focuses on processes rather than results, and there is a constant state of improvement.

According to Kaizen philosophy, everything can be improved. This is true in the industrial sphere as well as in all areas of life. There is nothing in the industrial field that cannot be improved. A business can produce a quality product. However, this does not mean that the same business cannot produce the same product in a better quality way. Therefore, businesses should always look for ways to produce higher quality products.

Kaizen’s philosophy is against the approach of businesses which proclaim “We are already good.”, “We produce the best quality products”, or “We are the leader in the market”. Because there is no such thing as perfect in Kaizen’s understanding. Because if there was perfection, there would be no change. Now that change exists, there’s no such thing as perfect.

Kaizen process

Kaizen technical tools are carried out by slow but continuous improvement of the time and cost spent in production. The goal here is to improve the process rather than the results. In this way, the results are improved in the short term and the improvement is achieved in the long term. In Kaizen, the human element has a different importance than other production processes. Therefore, the priority is the functioning of teamwork.

In this process, all employees in production and management are expected to be partners in the process. Rather than just waiting for new ideas from the core team, it is the primary goal to include people in production who are in direct contact with and can recognize the problems. For this reason, every individual working in the process is responsible for Kaizen and are part of it. The ideas of employees at each level are learned and these ideas are used as the data that guides the process.

In the problem solving phase, it is aimed to find a root solution to the problems by creating teams with different tasks. The aim here is to ensure the continuity of the process with permanent solutions rather than workarounds. Improving major inventions with small steps is Kaizen’s underlying idea.

Continuous improvement improves the quality of products and services, reduces costs, improves working methods, reduces the uptime of the entire process and meets the requirements of the customer and organization.

Innovation and Kaizen

Although Innovation and Kaizen are complementary and key to development, they are different concepts. Innovation is the replacement of the existing system, that is, with radical changes. Kaizen, on the other hand, is a small change to the system for better functioning of the existing system.

What’s new: While large investments enable short-term development with new technologies, Kaizen makes these innovations more efficient and sustained with small investments and small steps. In short, Kaizen is complementary to innovations.

Application of Kaizen in Industry

Today, with the successful implementation of Kaizen, significant competitive advantages can be achieved, so it can be said that the elements that contributed to making Kaizen successful in the Toyota production system still apply.

In a context like today, where speed and efficiency are very important, Kaizen can be even more important and effective than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.

Kaizen achieves higher quality and productivity; It also provides visible results in increasing responsibility and loyalty by employees who allow it to maintain its popularity in industrial practice and continue to be widely used in companies around the world.

Kaizen methodology requires a strong discipline to challenge new brands in terms of concentration, quality, efficiency, customer satisfaction, cycle times and costs required to continuously improve.

Kaizen’s success is due to its inclusion in continuous improvement of all its employees, which in many cases contribute to small and gradual changes. Therefore, Kaizen focuses on the identification of its problems.

Example :

American Airlines launched a study in 1987 to cut costs, and investigations and observations found that 80% of First Class passengers did not eat all the olives served in the salad. For this reason, an annual profit of USD 40,000 was obtained by reducing one olive from the salads.

Conclusion

Kaizen is an ongoing, continuous application as long as production continues. Its aim is to ensure the continuity as well as the improvement of the existing system. The basis of this continuity is the support and development of the system with new inventions. Kaizen, which gives successful results when applied in production, can also be applied in many areas of our lives.