Kaizen is a wonderful Japanese philosophy in improving their productivity. This con cept can be implemented to any type and shape of businesses. Many businessmen from around the world try to execute this concept, but the result is, somehow, still not as well as Japanese do. Therefore, trough this blog, I'd like to discuss and share opinions about it. Let's dig kaizen, the original kaizen from where it was born.
Kaizen (改善)
flickr
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Hi.. finally I got my own domain. I moved the content of my blog from now on.. here is the new address
www.japankaizen.com/blog or click here.
If you have time, and need something to rejuvenate your mind, visit www.japankaizen.com/crazy, or click this
Free storage room, visit this
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Since its definition is a change to make existing methods give better results, kaizen is a feedback. As a feedback, kaizen appears after people involved in an existing method thought that they can provide better if they change the method.
In management knowledge, we know Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM), which is an integrated approach to the management of all forms of feedback available to an organization. In kaizen, feedback is in narrow scope. In an organization, no matter it provide goods or services or both, basically, the process of providing its products is shown as figure below.
Input consists of Man (human resources), Materials, Machines, and Methods. Some management knowledge might argue that input for recent environment has to include information, since information became crucial factor in determining a success of a firm. I completely agree with them, however, it can be grouped in materials, as information can be considered as part of organization’s materials.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
One of characteristics of Japanese production system compared with others is the implementation of Kaizen. Kaizen, or 改善in kanji, is a wonderful concept of improving productivity. Literally, kaizen comprises of kai (改), means “change”, and 善 meaning “better”. Change refers to current method(s). So, kaizen means change(s) of current method to make it produces better result.
There are plenty of opinions about where kaizen came from and who initialized it. I won’t discuss about it, since this blog emphasizes the practices of kaizen, Japanese kaizen, not where it came from nor who introduced it. I choose Japanese kaizen is because it is unique. Japanese kaizen is slightly, and sometime completely, different compared with other practices in other countries.
Kaizen, basically, consists of two main activities, namely;
Kaizen activity starts from very simple to very complex activities. An effort to improve the way to clean floor, to save electric energy by reducing the number of lamps are examples of kaizen. So are the efforts of improving the way Toyota’s engineers in shortening the development of new cars.
Kaizen is implemented both in small local firms and global companies. Not only Japanese companies that is trying to utilize this philosophy. Many western businessmen are also pursuing excellence productivity through implementing kaizen.
Toyota, a number one cars maker in the world, after beating GM, is one of successful companies implementing kaizen. Toyota, in its hand book, embraces kaizen as one of its 5 operation bases. In complete, Toyota’s operation based on below principles;
- Relentless efforts for continuous improvement
- Soui Kufu (Individual creativity and innovation)/benchmarking
- Search for breakthroughand elimination of taboos
- pursuit of profitbased on cost reduction
