Kaizen – The Wheel Keeping Lean Running
When Tiger Woods won his first Master‟s championship, what did he do the next day? Did he rest on his hands and take a few days off, congratulating himself because he officially was the best in the world at that very moment? No, instead, he was on the golf course, fixing the very few things that he noticed wrong with his swing during the 72 holes of golf he had just finished playing. Businesses can learn something from Tiger, and it probably isn't what you think. Instead of resting on his laurels, Tiger decided that he would constantly be improving his game. As you can probably guess, this is one of Tiger‟s few secrets to becoming the absolute best at his sport. While businesses can learn from Tiger‟s skill, perseverance, concentration, and focus, more importantly, businesses should learn to focus on Tiger‟s example of constant improvement. Luckily, there is a process that already exists that systemizes the ability to constantly be improving one‟s business. Enter the Kiazen business practices. Kaizen, as you can imagine, got its first start in Japan, and can be directly traced back to account for a large portion of Japan‟s success as a country in the days following World War II. It is now accepted as common culture within most places of business and is adopted by the most successful people and business without fail. It is also used in the self improvement area of development, but the main focus of this article is in the business management application. Kaizen is the process of constant improvement in all processes, procedures, and methods that drive a business by focusing on small, continuous improvements in everything every single employee does in that company. While it is easy to chalk this up as a very helpful production tool and lean manufacturing tool, the reality is that Kaizen starts to truly come alive when it is incorporated into daily business practiced by every single member of the company, from the CEO all the way down to the most untrained, new line worker. As can be see When taken on board, Kaizen teaches people to think about every single aspect of their business at all times. In this day of automation and consistent, repetitive tasks, this usually poses the biggest hurdle for the process to take effect. When the workers finally do decide to internalize the efficiency process, they are taught to keep an open mind about every single thing they do, and then use the scientific method to identify, deduce, troubleshoot, and improve
![[Kaizen.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5orI-TalWDKh3cZMiKQZXwJhtg4AXs5iXlS5WbmuwxHnhIFfdwT1H9zXlqi9b5wcSGvagpAMJzH3oSVzzQ4Fth54aMGk6JPEwzpaUKIrB9xEBiNNFbgNrUzhDtKPrnucoOKnMhg8-GCQ/s640/Kaizen.jpg)
any inefficiencies that they may see.As demonstrated in Figure (1), Kaizen is a constant business process, with each stage in the cycle feeding and merging in with each other for a constant state of improvement, leading to the leanest company and processes possible with the most self propelled improvement culture allowed. The end result of using this business practice is a more streamlined business that has employees that continue with the process of improvement almost automatically, whether you tell them to or not. In the following example, you‟ll see how the Kaizen business practices can be incorporated into the everyday life of any business. Frank works in an office cubicle in which he processes a 2 page claimant form for returns of a company‟s product. This claim form is a document that is filled out by the customer, Frank himself, or the customer service representative that talks to the customer over the phone. Frank‟s job is to review the claimant‟s form, decide whether the claim is a valid claim for reimbursement, refund, or denial. A few forms even end up going to the legal department because either the customer is threatening legal action or there is a vulnerability in the legal policies of the company that may someday lead to a lawsuit. Unfortunately, Frank‟s job is very tedious and after reading over 100 claims per day, he quickly becomes tired, bored, and unhappy with the monotony. He then was ordered by his manager to attend Kaizen business training. When Frank came back, he realized there were quite a few problems with the way they were going about processing claims. First, Frank noticed that he was finding that there was a lot of unnecessary information requested on the claim form. By restructuring the form, Frank got the size of the form down to one page, saving the company money on paper costs, as well as time needed to process the claim. He also found that the decision to send a claim to legal was one that anybody could make, with a certain amount of training and guidance. He suggested to his manager that the customer services representatives, which accounted for over 80% of the forms, should be trained to decide whether a form goes to legal or him, and cut him out of the loop of reviewing the forms. This saved the company tens of thousands of dollars as well as cut about 2 days of processing time off of those applications. As you can see, the process can be practiced by anyone in the workplace, not just CEO‟s or lean managers. In fact, when Kaizen is internalized by a company, it will only become effective if every single member of the company jumps on board with the changes. Because of the small change nature of the practice, if this is not internalized by all, the company may only see small changes in their bottom line. If practiced correctly, a business that employs Kaizen thinking will always have an improving bottom line. They will be constantly thinking of ways on the worker level to improve their own jobs, even if it is slightly and borderline immeasurable. After a short period of time, however, many small changes turn into big changes (for the better) to the bottom line.
When Tiger Woods won his first Master‟s championship, what did he do the next day? Did he rest on his hands and take a few days off, congratulating himself because he officially was the best in the world at that very moment? No, instead, he was on the golf course, fixing the very few things that he noticed wrong with his swing during the 72 holes of golf he had just finished playing. Businesses can learn something from Tiger, and it probably isn't what you think. Instead of resting on his laurels, Tiger decided that he would constantly be improving his game. As you can probably guess, this is one of Tiger‟s few secrets to becoming the absolute best at his sport. While businesses can learn from Tiger‟s skill, perseverance, concentration, and focus, more importantly, businesses should learn to focus on Tiger‟s example of constant improvement. Luckily, there is a process that already exists that systemizes the ability to constantly be improving one‟s business. Enter the Kiazen business practices. Kaizen, as you can imagine, got its first start in Japan, and can be directly traced back to account for a large portion of Japan‟s success as a country in the days following World War II. It is now accepted as common culture within most places of business and is adopted by the most successful people and business without fail. It is also used in the self improvement area of development, but the main focus of this article is in the business management application. Kaizen is the process of constant improvement in all processes, procedures, and methods that drive a business by focusing on small, continuous improvements in everything every single employee does in that company. While it is easy to chalk this up as a very helpful production tool and lean manufacturing tool, the reality is that Kaizen starts to truly come alive when it is incorporated into daily business practiced by every single member of the company, from the CEO all the way down to the most untrained, new line worker. As can be see When taken on board, Kaizen teaches people to think about every single aspect of their business at all times. In this day of automation and consistent, repetitive tasks, this usually poses the biggest hurdle for the process to take effect. When the workers finally do decide to internalize the efficiency process, they are taught to keep an open mind about every single thing they do, and then use the scientific method to identify, deduce, troubleshoot, and improve
any inefficiencies that they may see.As demonstrated in Figure (1), Kaizen is a constant business process, with each stage in the cycle feeding and merging in with each other for a constant state of improvement, leading to the leanest company and processes possible with the most self propelled improvement culture allowed. The end result of using this business practice is a more streamlined business that has employees that continue with the process of improvement almost automatically, whether you tell them to or not. In the following example, you‟ll see how the Kaizen business practices can be incorporated into the everyday life of any business. Frank works in an office cubicle in which he processes a 2 page claimant form for returns of a company‟s product. This claim form is a document that is filled out by the customer, Frank himself, or the customer service representative that talks to the customer over the phone. Frank‟s job is to review the claimant‟s form, decide whether the claim is a valid claim for reimbursement, refund, or denial. A few forms even end up going to the legal department because either the customer is threatening legal action or there is a vulnerability in the legal policies of the company that may someday lead to a lawsuit. Unfortunately, Frank‟s job is very tedious and after reading over 100 claims per day, he quickly becomes tired, bored, and unhappy with the monotony. He then was ordered by his manager to attend Kaizen business training. When Frank came back, he realized there were quite a few problems with the way they were going about processing claims. First, Frank noticed that he was finding that there was a lot of unnecessary information requested on the claim form. By restructuring the form, Frank got the size of the form down to one page, saving the company money on paper costs, as well as time needed to process the claim. He also found that the decision to send a claim to legal was one that anybody could make, with a certain amount of training and guidance. He suggested to his manager that the customer services representatives, which accounted for over 80% of the forms, should be trained to decide whether a form goes to legal or him, and cut him out of the loop of reviewing the forms. This saved the company tens of thousands of dollars as well as cut about 2 days of processing time off of those applications. As you can see, the process can be practiced by anyone in the workplace, not just CEO‟s or lean managers. In fact, when Kaizen is internalized by a company, it will only become effective if every single member of the company jumps on board with the changes. Because of the small change nature of the practice, if this is not internalized by all, the company may only see small changes in their bottom line. If practiced correctly, a business that employs Kaizen thinking will always have an improving bottom line. They will be constantly thinking of ways on the worker level to improve their own jobs, even if it is slightly and borderline immeasurable. After a short period of time, however, many small changes turn into big changes (for the better) to the bottom line.
Prepared By: Md. Tarikul Islam
01912885383
jonytex073@gmail.com
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