Everyone can be a Kaizen Expert!

"Kaizen" is the Japanese concept for continuous improvement.

The meaning is easily understood if you read the Kanji text. If you read them in English however, the meaning is diluted.

The truth is that Kaizen is more of a mindset, and an attitude, not so much of a tool like SPC, DOE, Fishbone Diagram, or Pareto Chart. When someone goes for Kaizen training, he/she is getting a training of the mind. The concept of "Continuous Improvement" is ingrained into a person's mind and in doing so, increases the chance of a person taking proactive measures to improve on his/her work. The best thing about Kaizen, it can be adopted by anyone. You do not need to be an expert to embrace it, you just need to be initiated into the Kaizen concept.

In a typical Kaizen training, the concept of Kaizen is explained to participants. Numerous examples that are shown give ideas on how one can bring about continuous improvement. These examples also goes on to show that Kaizen can be adopted easily. At times, simple tools are taught to make the improvement process more efficient.

Kaizen is also about taking baby steps in improvements. Keep improving, and you will be better off. It seems easy to do, but the truth is that consistent improvement is difficult for it takes a lot of discipline and effort. When work piles up, new projects come in, or when things get tough, people get distracted. More often, improvement takes a back seat; it doesn't get the priority status anymore. Kaizen becomes a "Nagging Mother"...you knew you had good advice, but you just find it difficult to implement.

For a company to be in a continuous state of improvement, it needs constant reminders. Organizing a Kaizen Day every quarter will work for most (Organizations with limited resources may consider one every 6 months). In a Kaizen Day, a trained facilitator helps Kaizen groups identify opportunities for improvement and helps them worked out concrete plans to tackle these problems. The flux of ideas and action plans arising out of these Kaizen events are good enough to keep the team busy for the next quarter. With improvement activities throughout the year, a company would be guaranteed continuous growth. Doesn't it sound like a tortoise strategy in a race? Slow & Steady!

Kaizen has receive a new lease of life with the introduction and merging of state-of-the-art group based tools in quality, innovation. By tapping into the wisdom of a diverse group of people, a skilled facilitator can bring about a lot of changes in an hour or two.

I merged Cause & Effect Analysis, Action Learning, Affinity Diagram, Brain-writing techniques, and Multi-voting technique to run a Kaizen workshop just a few days ago. There was total participation among team members, fun and laughter throughout the workshop, and the proposed solutions were great. The teams manage to solve their problems in an hour.

We were able to gather group wisdom , gain consensus, and develop innovative solutions with newly integrated Kaizen tools that are really easy to use. (I'll post about the technique another day.)

Now, everyone can be a Kaizen Expert!