What is Kaizen?

Kaizen is a Japanese word that literally stands for “Kai” = Change and “Zen” = Good which is synonymous to continuous improvement. The word implies relatively low cost, small and incremental improvements that involve everyone from the frontline workers to the managers. This is in contrast to Innovation (also known as Kaikaku in Japanese) which is a radical improvement through significant investment in equipment or technology. It is often said that western management emphasizes more on innovation while Japanese management focuses more on Kaizen.

The Kaizen philosophy emphasizes that everyone should strive to continuously improve and everything can be improved. This means status quo should not be accepted.

In current time, Kaizen is often used interchangeably with Kaizen Event which is associated with an improvement event where employees and leaders come together to brainstorm solutions for process issues that are bothering them or to relook at the status quo. This event can last from a few days to weeks depending on the scope of work.

According to Masaaki Imai, in order for an organization to adopt a Kaizen mindset, there are a few basic concepts and systems that have to be implemented and they are:

• Focus on small incremental improvements. Maintain and improve standards
• Focus more on the processes rather than the results
• Follow PDCA cycle
• Put quality first
• Speak with data
• The next process is the customer