Kaizen – much more than just small improvements

A huge opportunity for significant improvements seems to be neglected in the ongoing discussions about continuous improvement, KPI boards, A3 etc. Kaizen is often mentioned as the activity to implement good ideas from employees on a day-to-day basis. Typically described as an activity which is driven locally by employees in the area. But there are several problems with this way of doing Kaizen activities:

•Even small changes to a process will typically require help from IT, Technical department, Quality or other resources from outside the area

•If a Kaizen – as I have often seen described – is run like a typical project with a team, meetings, Gantt chart etc. then chances are that the change will never be completed or at least will take “forever” to complete

The principle of true Kaizen is to make a fast improvement with a team of people who has the competences and decision power to complete the task. This will often mean that a cross functional team must be established.

Based on my experience as a Kaizen facilitator the following steps will be the recipe for a strong Kaizen performance:

1.Identify and describe the problem to be solved. The problem must be prioritized locally in the team or department where it occurs but must also be relevant for the fulfilment of strategic targets or for the end-to-end value flow. 

2.Appoint the process owner and an experienced Kaizen facilitator to ensure structure and decision power

3.Prepare the Kaizen by collecting data and information and set the right team and duration of the event. Bring the team together and agree on problem and target to be achieved

4.Run the Kaizen event. It can be anything from few days to 2-3 weeks. All team members are 100% allocated to the Kaizen event during this time slot.

5.The kaizen event must complete all steps from analysis to idea generation and to implementation and test of the solution.

This approach is an extremely efficient method to make even major changes in a business. It is the pivoting element for a Lean transformation and is an incredible learning process for the organization. 

Most companies do not think they can release resources from daily business for days at a time – but the alternative is worse – endless projects which – if they succeed – in any case will have missed the value creation that meanwhile could have been achieved by a fast Kaizen event