Kaizen

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Kaizen in Kanji

Kaizen ( 改善 , spoken with a voiced S ; Japanese kai "change, change", zen "for the better"; "change for the better", to distinguish the terminus technicus from the colloquial term, often also カ イ ゼ ン ) denotes both a Japanese life style and work philosophy as well as a methodological concept, at the center of which is the pursuit of continuous and infinite improvement. The improvement takes place in a gradual, selective perfecting or optimization of a product or process.

In the Western economy, the concept was taken to a management system developed and in practice the term Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) / Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) was introduced. In Europe, the focus is on continuously increasing quality and reducing costs and is therefore seen as an integral part of quality management .

Definition

In the narrower sense, a steady, incremental improvement is meant, in which managers and employees are included. According to the Kaizen philosophy, it is not the sudden improvement through innovation , but the gradual perfecting of the proven product that points the way to success . It is assumed that economic success is the result of products and services that achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction with excellent quality. The constant search for improvement at all levels of a company as the core function of a kaizen program or continuous improvement process (CIP) is derived from this conviction . These include, for example:

  • Perfecting the company's suggestion system
  • Investment in the training of employees
  • Employee-oriented leadership
  • Process orientation
  • Introduction of quality management

Overall, Kaizen or a CIP should help employees identify more with the company, which should contribute to a constant improvement in the competitive position.

A discontinuous, but abrupt improvement is also referred to as re-engineering .

Change not only quality-oriented: the Japanese practice

In Japan itself, the idea of ​​Kaizen is used regardless of its quality-related meaning that is widespread in the West. In Japanese practice, Kaizen is above all the philosophy of "eternal change". Above all, this means visible changes , for example the expansion of the functions of an electrical device, the reorganization of the internal hierarchy or in the administration the reorganization through incorporation and renaming of cities (so Saitama ).

The change does not necessarily have to be accompanied by an improvement in quality. Real quality improvement is often "inconspicuous" and cannot be measured precisely. As a result, it has no marketing value and is often not even noticed.

At the product level, this type of kaizen is closely related to the Japanese marketing practice of creating an expanded utility value for the consumer for a commodity through slight design changes. New functions are constantly being added to electrical appliances that are not part of the core functionality (e.g. karaoke effect in stereo systems), which overload the overall construction and can even degrade the quality. In the case of mobile phones, manufacturers are increasing the resolution of the built-in cameras - a number that suggests “quality improvement” to the consumer, but which causes increasing problems with the increasing file sizes. Machine translation software is advertised on the basis of the size of the vocabulary (number of millions of stored words), which does not necessarily correlate with the translation quality achieved.

This form of Kaizen practice leads to a high rate of development with ever shorter product life cycles. This pace of development, especially in electrical appliances, is due to a not inconsiderable number of product innovations that have established themselves worldwide (for example flat screen televisions ), but also increasing complexity and the associated higher number of errors. Example of the rate of change: the PAL television standard was in place for 50 years; the HDMI standards were renewed in a few years.

Emergence

After the devastating defeat in World War II, Japan was economically on the ground. The new labor laws introduced by the American occupation strengthened the position of workers in the negotiations on more favorable terms of employment. The unions used their strength to reach far-reaching agreements. Thus the distinction between manual workers and employees was dropped. The right of management to fire employees has been severely restricted. The unions achieved a share of the company's profits for the employees in the form of a bonus, which was paid in addition to the basic wage. In addition, there were no “guest workers” (temporary immigrants willing to accept poor working conditions for high pay) or minorities with limited employment opportunities in Japan.

Even Toyota was due to overall economic problems in Japan in crisis and wanted to dismiss its staff a quarter. After a hard labor dispute and extensive negotiations, the Toyoda family and the unions worked out a compromise, which remains the basis for relations between today employers and workers in the Japanese auto industry is. Although a quarter of the employees were laid off as planned, the remaining employees received two guarantees: lifelong employment and a remuneration that is based on the length of service instead of the activity and which includes a bonus payment linked to the company's profit.

The workers no longer represented variable or short-term fixed costs , but in the long term they were more significant fixed costs than the company's machines. Because these could be written off and scrapped, while the company's human capital had to be profitable over a period of around 40 years. So it made sense to continuously improve the skills of the workers and to use their knowledge, experience and work performance.

Five key fundamentals of Kaizen

Process orientation

The Kaizen way of thinking represents, among other things, a departure from the pure result orientation. In this context, process orientation also means documenting the process and further improving this process standard. The main point is that you will try to optimize your profit. However, this is only possible with high customer satisfaction, since customer acquisition is more expensive than customer loyalty. In order to ensure customer satisfaction, the above-mentioned factors are in the foreground. A process-oriented organizational design and the use of continuous process improvement methods, such as B. Kaizen, can positively influence the innovation performance of companies.

customer focus

Kaizen divides customers into internal and external customers. The external customer is the end user, the internal customer is e.g. B. a branch in the company. If organizational unit A manufactures a product that has to be processed in organizational unit B, then B is the internal customer. If B recognizes defects in the product, it informs A in order to avoid subsequent errors. Problems often arise at these interfaces in the company. So you try to start there to implement the goals of the Kaizen: quality assurance and improvement, customer satisfaction and cost reduction by the employees. Customer surveys are carried out to eliminate defects and improve performance.

Quality orientation

As part of total quality management , a constant total quality control is carried out, in which the quality is continuously monitored during production using a complex measuring process. The quality indicators and measurement methods are described and determined by demanding quality standards.

Criticism orientation

In Kaizen, criticism is seen as an opportunity for constant improvement. Therefore, criticism is not only allowed, but encouraged. Every employee in the company is asked to make suggestions for improvement; management should take this up constructively and implement it as far as possible. Improvement suggestions from employees or dedicated work groups are requested in the Kaizen. The suggestions are checked for usability and evaluated so that they can be incorporated into the company processes if the overall assessment is positive. There is a constant cycle of planning, activity, control and improvement, the PDCA cycle: 

Plan → Do → Check → Act.

As a result, all processes in the company should be constantly analyzed and improved.

standardization

If an improvement has been implemented that has proven to be suitable, it is defined as a standard and thus permanently integrated into the company's process model . To do this, the cycle is changed to SDCA (Standardize, Do, Check, Act). Only when the standardization has been fully completed will further improvements be sought.

execution

The 5S movements

The 5S are primarily aimed at workshop workplaces, whereby the workplace is understood as the place where the value-adding processes take place in the company.

Seiri
Create order: remove everything that is not necessary from your work area!
Seiton
Tidiness: organize things and keep them in their right place!
Seiso
Cleanliness: keep your workplace clean!
Seiketsu
Personal sense of order: make 5S a habit by setting standards!
Shitsuke
Discipline: make cleanliness and order your personal concern!

The 7M Checklist (Ishikawa Diagram)

These are the seven most important factors that need to be checked over and over again:

  • human
  • machine
  • material
  • method
  • Milieu / Mitwelt (environment)
  • management
  • Measurability

The original 5M method was expanded to include the last two factors, since the influences of management in the system and the measurability have a certain scope. (See also Ishikawa diagram as a graphic representation of the 7M.)

The 7W checklist

The 7W checklist as an original tool for rhetoric may go back to Cicero (7 W questions)

What
is to be done?
who
makes it?
Why
do you do it?
How
is it done?
When
is it done?
Where
should it be done?
How so
isn't it done differently?

Related to the 7W questionnaire is the principle of “Go to the source” (Genkin-butso). In the event of undesired results or errors, this means asking "Why?" 5 times in order to find a solution. Furthermore, managers should get an idea of ​​the situation on site, for example a production process, and not decide remotely.

The W questions are used in a wide variety of areas, for example when analyzing texts, as an aid in defining projects and in work analysis and, as a result, in the definition of work content.

In the field of quality management , this principle is used in the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis to identify potential weak points.

The three mu

The three mu are the basis for the loss philosophy of the Toyota Production System (TPS). In the context of this loss philosophy, the three mu as focal points of the loss potential are seen as negative, so they should be avoided.

Muda
Waste, see the seven muda
Mura
Deviations in the processes (also imbalance)
Muri
Overload of employees and machines

The seven muda

The seven kinds of waste (seven muda) as typical sources of loss.

Waste itself ( muda ) is the obvious cause of loss. A distinction is made between seven types of waste that occur almost everywhere in the company.

Muda from overproduction
Produce more than necessary.
Muda by waiting
Inactive hands of an employee. Process timing not optimized.
Muda from superfluous transportation
Moving materials or products does not add value.
Muda by making defective parts
Defective products disrupt the production flow and require expensive repairs.
Muda from excessive storage
End and semi-finished products, vendor parts and materials that are stored as stocks do not add value.
Muda from unnecessary exercise
Cumbersome, unergonomic and unnecessary movements consume time, lead to fatigue and increase the risk of injury.
Muda due to an unfavorable manufacturing process
The additional equipment of products or services with properties that are neither desired nor paid for by the customer.

Just-in-Time (JIT)

  • This principle is a logistics-oriented, decentralized organization and control concept, which aims at the material supply and disposal for a production on demand and thus a precise delivery of the raw materials or products with the requested quality in the desired quantity (and also packaging) to Secures the time when they are actually needed to the desired location. This eliminates storage costs; the remaining administrative effort can be reduced to a relative minimum.
  • An increase in “ just-in-time ” is what is known as “ just in sequence ” (JIS). Based on the JIT principle, the products are also delivered to the customer in the correct order.

A JIT has now become standard throughout the automotive industry. It is used, for example, for parts of the interior (seats, airbags, steering wheels, dashboards) or painted parts. The generally higher transport and handling costs caused by JIT or JIS are offset by savings in inventory, storage or space costs.

Total productive maintenance

  • Constant monitoring of the production lines
  • Trying to constantly improve the strands
  • Exclusion of any kind of waste

More information in the article Total Productive Maintenance .

aims

Several goals are pursued with Kaizen. The main goal is higher customer satisfaction, since customer acquisition is more expensive than customer loyalty. To ensure customer satisfaction, three factors are in the foreground:

  • cost cutting
  • quality control
  • Speed ​​(time efficiency).

The proponents of the Kaizen method assume that the current state is in need of improvement and that one has to keep working on it in order to improve it.

Changes in the area of ​​employees are also desirable. In this way, their commitment is to be guaranteed through continuous further training, internal hierarchies are to be adapted so that every employee has a say in changes (see change management ).

The Kaizen philosophy advocates a strong involvement of all areas of a company in a constant effort to create a better working environment for everyone involved by means of process improvements, which in turn should guarantee the best quality of the products. It is therefore important to carry the constant improvement into all areas.

operation area

Kaizen is mainly used in industrial companies, mainly in the automotive industry. Kaizen is also becoming more and more popular in companies and organizations from other industries. For example, Kaizen is used as part of Lean Hospital u. a. Used successfully in healthcare.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Götz Schmidt: Organization and Business Analysis - Methods and Techniques , Gießen, 2009, p. 97.
  2. ↑ Change Management Handbook, p. 32.
  3. ↑ http://www.lehrerfreund.de/in/schule/1s/w-fragen-arbeitsblatt/
  4. ↑ http://pm-blog.com/2006/12/28/6-w-fragen/
  5. ↑ Work analysis (PDF; 1.2 MB).

literature

  • Dirk Hanebuth: Rethinking Kaizen. An empirical approach to the employee perspective. In: Jörg Felfe (Ed.): Organizational Development and Leadership. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2002, pp. 59–85 ( Business Psychology 11), ISBN 3-631-38624-9 .
  • Masaaki Imai: Kaizen. The key to Japanese success in competition . 7th edition. Ullstein, Berlin et al. 1996, ISBN 3-548-35332-0 ( Ullstein 35332 Ullstein-Sachbuch Management ).
  • Masaaki Imai: Gemba Kaizen. Permanent quality improvement, time savings and cost reductions in the workplace . Wirtschaftsverlag Langen Müller, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7844-7362-8 .
  • Claudia Kostka, Sebastian Kostka: The continuous improvement process , Carl Hanser Verlag, 6th edition 2013, ISBN 978-3446437883
  • Georg Kraus , Christel Becker-Kolle, Thomas Fischer: Handbook Change Management. Control of change processes in organizations. Influencing factors and participants. Concepts, tools and methods . 2nd Edition. Cornelsen Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-589-23635-3 .
  • Jürgen Kurz : Forever tidy , Gabal Verlag GmbH, 7th edition Offenbach 2013, ISBN 978-3-89749-735-1
  • Sabine Leikep, Klaus Bieber: The way. Efficiency in the office with KAIZEN methods . 2nd Edition. Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 3-8334-6341-4 .
  • Frank Menzel: Production optimization with CIP. The continuous improvement process for increased competitiveness. mi-Wirtschaftsbuch - FinanzBuch Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-636-03138-9 .