“A common-sense, low-cost approach to management” – Gemba Kaizen, Masaaki Imai.
“In Japanese, kaizen means continuous improvement. The word implies improvement that involves everyone – both managers and workers – and entails relatively little expense. The kaizen philosophy assumes that our way of life – be it our working life, our social life, or our home life – should focus on constant self-improvement efforts,” explains Masaaki Imai, the kaizen guru, in his book `Gemba Kaizen’. Kaizen stresses on housekeeping, an indispensable ingredient for good management; waste elimination to become cost effective; and standardization to assure quality. Observation, prioritization, data collection, and standardization are indispensable to kaizen implementation. “It targets MUDA – which is Japanese for waste. It attacks wasteful, non-value adding activities and tries to eliminate them, which in turn improves operations, productivity and profits,” explains Payal Sheth, who co-authored “Chronicles of a Quality Detective”.
The Japanese are said to have implemented this concept in their life throughout history. Its industrial growth graph typically moved up even while that of the western economies progressed horizontally. In the 1980s, when Japan opened to the world, the reason for this growth – kaizen—became evident and the Western economies too started experiencing exponential growth following its implementation. As a result, while breakthroughs are important, there is a constant focus on improving existing processes, whether problematic or not. And, once they have effected the required improvement, these processes are standardized.
Kaizen’s appeal is in the fact that it believes in utilizing existing resources – be it manpower or machinery—and does not believe in high-cost investments. And that anybody can adopt it by mere observation. “Yes, in the long run you need to get trained to get deeper into the subject,” adds Sheth.
These methods are now formalized and taught by Kaizen Institute across the globe. Consultants also conduct workshops.
Detecting Quality Problems
`Chronicles of a Quality Detective’, coauthored by Dr. Gondhalekar (Dr. G), and Payal Sheth is a treasure trove of case studies, highlighting the use of kaizen methods to address problems that even experts in the field are unable to handle. The reason, simply, is that, like Sherlock Homes, Dr. G and Sheth focus completely on the problem, collect live data by being with the entire process, collect just enough data instead of being flooded by it, use logic and at no point do expertise and past experience interfere with the collection of proof. As a result, problems that have taken months and still defy logic are solved within days.
“All have been given brains. We only need to use it and we will be able to address the problems we face,” stresses Dr. N Ravichandran, President (Operations), Lucas TVS, who is a kaizen expert.
Relevant across Industries
Kaizen is relevant not just on the shopfloor but across industries and across operations. “It works very well in the service sector,” asserts Sheth. This has been demonstrated amply in Lucas-TVS, an auto parts manufacturer from Chennai, India, where 5220 kaizens have been implemented right from the way tools and implements are stored to the way the starters are manufactured to the way mediclaim is claimed by the employees, effecting an overall cost saving of Rs 63,65,670.
Kaizen is a team effort, with small groups working together to effect improvements on a continuous basis. The motivation has to come from the top, but the implementation has to be across the organization. The fact that companies have differentiate themselves from their competition by cutting costs and improving productivity has made kaizen popular among Indian companies, though its implementation happens in spikes.
Last word
Though it may seem in the beginning that the fees of consultants are too high, when compared to the savings they ultimately make for the business, it hardly seems anything. It is the big picture that matters.
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