Production - Kaizen

Author: Jim Riley Last updated: Sunday 23 September, 2012

Production & operations - Kaizen

Kaizen (or ‘continuous improvement’) is an approach of constantly introducing small incremental changes in a business in order to improve quality and/or efficiency. This approach assumes that employees are the best people to identify improvements in the way things are done since they see the processes in action all the time. A firm that uses this approach therefore has to have a culture that encourages and rewards employees for their

The key features of Kaizen include:

Improvements are based on many, small changes rather than the radical changes that might arise from Research and Development
As the ideas come from the workers themselves, they are less likely to be radically different, and therefore easier to implement
Small improvements are less likely to require major capital investment than major process changes
It helps encourage workers to take ownership for their work, and can help reinforce team working, thereby improving worker motivation

Whilst staff suggestions can help to enrich the work for many employees, Kaizen can be seen as an unrelenting process. Some firms set targets for individuals or for teams to come up with a minimum number of ideas in a period of time. Employees can find this to be an unwelcome pressure, as it becomes increasingly difficult to find further scope for improvement. Some firms, especially Japanese-owned, conduct quality improvement sessions in the workers’ own time, which can lead to resentment unless there is appropriate recognition and reward for suggestions

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