The Japanese manufacturing industry is renowned for their methods of process improvement. It’s introduced us to methods such as Kanban and Lean. Another approach that’s proven to be popular amongst businesses who want to achieve business improvement is Kaizen. By Dinnie Muslihat.
Kaizen is an approach that encourages an entire company to work together to achieve continuous improvement. It believes that change happens iteratively instead of in big, drastic moments.
In this article, we’ll discuss what Kaizen is, and how it can steer your business towards continuous improvement. The article describes:
- What is Kaizen?
- The history of Kaizen
- Key elements of Kaizen
- Understanding the benefits of continuous improvement
- Creating a culture of continuous improvement
- PDCA (Plan → Do → Check → Act)
- 5 Whys
- Kaizen event
A Kaizen event, also known as a Kaizen blitz or Kaizen burst, is a workshop-like event that focuses on process improvement. Often facilitated by someone in the implementation team, it includes training, analysis, and design of an area of business that requires enhancement. An event can take up to 10 days and tools such as process mapping are involved. Nice one!
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