Kaizen

Kaizen (pronounced with voiced S; jap Kai = change, change Zen = for the better改善; " change for the better " in order to distinguish the technical term from the colloquial name oftenカイゼン) refers to a Japanese living and working philosophy, in the center of which is striving for continuous improvement.

In business, the concept was further developed into a management system. In practice, the terms are used interchangeably Continuous Improvement Process (CIP ) and also Continuous Improvement Process ( CIP).

Definition

In a narrower sense, it is meant to be included in the leaders as employees an ever - incremental improvement. In Japanese, Kai means change = change; Zen = for the better. According to the philosophy of Kaizen points the way to success is not the sudden improvement through innovation, but the step-wise perfecting the tried and tested product. It is assumed that the economic success is the result of products and services that achieve the highest customer satisfaction with excellent quality. Based on this conviction, the constant search heads to improvement at all levels of a company as a core function of a Kaizen program from. These include, for example:

• Perfecting the employee suggestion system
• Investment in the training of employees
• Employee-oriented leadership
• Process orientation
• Introduction of quality management

Overall, to be achieved through kaizen or by a CIP higher employee identification with the company, which should contribute to a steady improvement in the competitive position.

A non - continuous but erratic improvement is sometimes referred to as re-engineering.

Change not only quality-oriented: The Japanese practice

In Japan, even the idea of ​​Kaizen regardless of its spread in the West quality-related meaning is being used. Kaizen is the Japanese practice, especially the philosophy of " eternal change." This means above all visible change, such as the extension of the functions of an electrical appliance, the reorganization of internal hierarchy or in the administration in recent times very frequent reorganizations and renaming of cities ( such Saitama ).

With the change needs to be accompanied not necessarily improve quality. Genuine quality improvement is often to measure " unimpressive " and not precise. Thus it has no marketing value and is often not noticed.

At the product level, this type of Kaizen is closely related to the Japanese marketing practices to provide the consumer for a commodity by slight design changes an extended utility. So electric appliances will be added new features again and again, not belonging to the core functionality (eg karaoke effect in stereo ), the overall design therefore the quality may even worsen it overloaded and. For mobile phones, the manufacturers provide a real battle for the resolution of the built-in cameras - a number that is concise " quality improvement " suggests to the consumer. And for ease of installation is advertised with the size of the vocabulary (number of millions of stored words ), which is not necessarily correlated with the unrealized translation quality.

This form of Kaizenpraktik leads to a high rate of development with ever shorter product life cycles. This pace of development, especially in electrical appliances is due to a significant number of product innovations, which have also gained worldwide (eg flat screen TV ), but also increasing complexity and resulting higher numbers of errors. In order to perform the speed in mind, one can for example the PAL television standard with the HDMI standards compare. The former had 50 years has been, the latter is renewed every few years.

Formation

Japan was after the crushing defeat in the Second World War economically on the ground. The new labor laws that were introduced by the American occupation, strengthened the position of workers in the negotiation of more favorable employment conditions. The unions used their strength in order to achieve far-reaching agreements. Thus, the distinction between workers and employees has been dropped. The right of business management to fire workers has been greatly restricted. The unions reached for the workers a share in the company profits in the form of a bonus that was paid in addition to basic pay. Moreover, there was no in Japan "guest workers" - temporary immigrants who were willing to accept for high pay with poor working conditions - or minorities with limited job opportunities.

The company Toyota was related to macroeconomic problems in Japan in a deep crisis and wanted to lay off a quarter of its staff. After a hard labor disputes and extensive negotiations, the family Toyota and the unions a historic compromise worked out, which is the basis for relations between employers and workers in the Japanese auto industry today. Although a quarter of workers were laid off as planned, but the remaining employees were given two guarantees: Lifetime employment and remuneration that takes depends on the length of service according to the activity and the one linked to the company profit bonus payment included.

The workers therefore do not constitute a variable or short-term fixed costs more, but in the long run they were even more important than the machine fixed costs of the company. Because this could be written off and scrapped, while the human capital of the firm over a period of about 40 years had to be profitable. So it was useful to improve the skills of workers continuously, and knowledge to use their experience and work performance.

Basics of Kaizen

Process orientation

The mindsets of Kaizen shall inter alia provide a departure from the pure result orientation dar. process orientation means in this context, document and improve this standard further. The essential point is that one is trying to maximize the profit. But this is only at high levels of customer satisfaction possible because customer acquisition is more expensive than customer retention. To ensure customer satisfaction, the above factors are paramount. In the context of process orientation should also be mentioned that a process-oriented organizational design and the application of continuous process improvement methods, such as Kaizen, can affect the innovation performance of firms positively.

Customer-supplier relationships

Kaizen divides the customers into internal and external customers. The external customer is the end user, the internal customer is a branch in operation. Thus, if point A produces a product that has to be further processed in location B, it is point B of the internal client. If point B detects defects on the product, it shares it with point A in order to avoid subsequent errors. Frequently, problems occur precisely at these interfaces on the company. So one tries to put there in order to implement the objectives of Kaizen: Quality assurance and improvement, customer satisfaction and cost reduction by employees. Kaizen is a continuous improvement.

Total Quality Management

The Total Quality Management initiated continuous quality planning and control of all products and processes, the company produces and performs.

Toyota had in the 1990s, the most advanced quality management in the automotive industry, it also demanded of its suppliers. Meanwhile, Kaizen and related methods have been successively adopted by other manufacturers.

Improvement & standardization ( PDCA cycle - Plan Do Check Act )

Improvement suggestions from employees or dedicated working groups be claimed in Kaizen. The proposals will be reviewed and evaluated in order to take on positive general assessment of the business processes on usability. The result is a continuous cycle of planning, action, monitoring and improvement: the PDCA cycle (Plan Do Check Act ). This is to all processes in the company are constantly analyzed and improved.

If an improvement was implemented, it will be set as the default and thus permanently integrated into the process model of the company. For this, the cycle is changed to SDCA ( Standardize Do Check Act ). Only after the standardization has been completed, a further improvement is desired.

The 5S movements

When 5S is a five-step approach to planning and improvement of clean, safe and standardized jobs.

The 7M Checklist

Here are the 7 most important factors that need to be checked again and again:

• Man
• Machine
• Material
• Method
• Environment / world around

The original 5 M method has two important factors

• Management and
• Measurability

Expanded since the influence of management in the system and the measurability of a certain make-up. ( See also Ishikawa diagram as a graphical representation form of the 7M. )

The 7- W Checklist

The 7- W checklist goes as an original tool for rhetoric may Cicero back (7 wh-questions )

Related to the 7 -W questions is the principle of the "Go to Source" ( Genkin - butso ). This states in undesirable results or errors 5 times the "why? " To ask in order to achieve a solution. But it also says that managers should make an image of the situation, for example, a production process, on-site and not decide from afar.

The wh-questions are used in diverse areas, such as in analyzing texts, as an aid in the definition of projects and in the job analysis and resulting in the definition of job content.

In the area of quality management, this principle is used in the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis to identify potential vulnerabilities.

The 3 -Mu Checklist

These three points are related to the staff, technology, method and time, and are considered negative, ie they are to be avoided.

The 7 types of waste

( Muda = Japanese for waste )

Meanwhile, often 2 other types of waste are discussed:

Just in time (JIT )

• Time delivery of raw materials or products with the required quality in the desired amount (and packing) the date on which they are actually needed, to the desired location. This eliminates not only the storage costs, but also the rest of the administrative burden can be reduced to a relative minimum.
• An increase of " just in time" is the " just in sequence" (JIS). Based on the principle, the JIT - products are additionally delivered in the correct order to the customer. Market leader in the development of this system in Europe is the Porsche company, which was restructured in the early 90s by Japanese business consultant. This principle was later applied in the automotive industry by Daimler Chrysler in the production of the Maybach 57 and 62 - for example, for the delivery of seats, airbags, steering wheels or dashboards.

Meanwhile, a JIT process in the entire automotive industry standard. It is used for example in custom parts of the interior or painted parts. The problems caused by JIT principle, or JIS higher transportation and handling costs are outweighed by savings in inventory, storage or space costs.

Total Productive Maintenance

• Constant monitoring of production lines
• Trial of continuous improvement of the strands
• Exclusion of wastes of any kind

On these and similar passages you realize the concept from its origins to the discrete manufacturing.

Objectives

Kaizen more than one target is tracked. In the main, a higher customer satisfaction is sought because customer acquisition is more expensive than customer retention. To ensure customer satisfaction, there are three factors in the foreground:

• Cost reduction
• Quality assurance
• Speed ​​(time efficiency).

Proponents of the Kaizen method always assume that the current state is in need of improvement and you always must continue to work on it to improve it.

Furthermore, changes ( "Change" ) is desired in the area of ​​employees. So whose commitment is to be ensured through continuous training, internal hierarchies have to be adjusted so that each employee a say in changes (see, change management).

The Kaizen philosophy argues for a strong involvement of all areas of a company's continuous efforts to create a better working environment for all participants by means of process improvements that will in turn guarantee the best quality of products. It is therefore necessary to carry the continuous improvement in all areas.

Representative

Representative of the Kaizen concept are mainly industrial companies, mainly from the automotive industry. Less applies Kaizen in workshop farms, construction sites or on individual holdings, which does not mean that it is not applicable there.