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Kaizen

Once you discover the bountiful results of Kaizen improvements, you’ll continue forever in the spirit of Kaizen. (Taiichi Ohno)

Kaizen is a mindset aimed to pursue continuous improvement for every process we perform, assuming we can always do it better with either small or big scale changes. Changes can come from each and every partner of the organization. It’s originally a Japanese philosophy, which literally means “change (kai) for the better (zen)”, then Kaizen is the commitment and self-discipline to constantly improve through change.

Kaizen is not a time-bounded initiative with a fixed goal, but a lifetime path to gradually make productivity improvements (done by everyone, everywhere, and every day), where we research, reflect, learn, and take action to effectively rise customer value, while fostering employee courage and engagement, making job more fulfilling and less tiring.

Shigeo Shingo (Ind. Engineer), consultant and trainer focused on improving factory management; and Taiichi Ohno (Ind. Engineer), former Manager at Toyota; were some of the main promoters and actual fathers of the Kaizen we know today. It started to proliferate in the 1950s with the creation of the Toyota Production System (TPS) among other tools to improve manufacturing performance.

Kaizen Events

To do Kaizen you don’t need money, it is enough to be willing to improve, a bit of knowledge, and a lot of effort. (Chihiro Nakao, former Toyota chairman, 1992)

A Kaizen event is a scheduled short-term session (15 minutes to a week long) intended to create improvement plans by identifying impediments, breaking them into smaller parts, analyzing root causes, and thinking ways of getting rid of them. As opposed to Kaizen, they are limited in scope and time-bounded. They seek to build enthusiasm and knowledge exchange, combining different perspectives and reaching alignment and commitment.

Five Whys

The basis of Toyota’s scientific approach … by repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear. (Taiichi Ohno)

The best way to solve a problem for good is to find out its cause (or the cause of that cause and so on), in other words: the “real” problem. Sakichi Toyoda (father of Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota) introduced the concept of Five Whys.

Having no problems is the biggest problem of all. (Taiichi Ohno)

Five Whys is a method to find the root cause of a given problem by asking five times why (the amount of times doesn’t actually have to be strictly five), uncovering a series of cause-and-effect events until we get to the issue that’s preventing us from improving our systems and processes. This approach of exploring inefficiencies can lead us to get useful insights even after the fifth “why,” allowing us to not only solve a problem and eliminate its root cause, but also to make several small improvements through that process.

Five S

To make environmental improvements and create a healthy work culture at the organization, we can use the Five S method, a systematic approach aimed to expose waste by cleaning, inspecting, and optimizing the workplace (Gemba). The name comes from the first letter of the five high impact, low cost activities that get each and everyone in the team to participate, thus raising the general sense of ownership. It’s a practice also adopted by Lean.

The Five S are:

  1. Seiri (整理): classify or organize, it is to separate items by how necessary they are. We shall throw away what’s not needed, keep aside what may be needed and make sure the keep close only the required items.
  1. Seiton (整頓): order or tide up, it is to take the items left from the preview step and arrange them in the best possible way, sorting by frequency of use, size, shape, color or whatever.
  1. Seisou (清掃):
  1. Seiketsu (清潔):
  1. Shitsuke (躾): discipline, it is to obey and apply these steps with consistency, learn from them and following them with no c.

Reference: The 5 ‘S’ Process: Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, Shitsuke (eesemi.com).

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