KAIZEN n Kaizen is a Japanese quality improvement

KAIZEN n Kaizen is a Japanese quality improvement philosophy named after the phrase “continuous improvement. ” Kaizen aims to create a quality oriented culture that permeates all levels of the business from manufacturing to management and aims to improve the organization in small increments from the ground up. Kaizen is the father of many quality improvement procedures including: suggestion systems, automation, small group activities, Kanban, just-in-time, zero defects, total productive maintenance, total quality control, and more.

According to Kaizen management has two major components: 1. maintenance 2. improvement n

n The objective of the maintenance function is to maintain current technological, managerial, and operating standards. The improvement function is aimed at improving current standards. Under the maintenance function, the management must first establish policies, rules, directives and standard operating procedures (SOPs) and then work towards ensuring that everybody follows SOP. The latter is achieved through a combination of discipline and human resource development measures. Under the improvement function, management works continuously towards revising the current standards, once they have been mastered, and establishing higher ones. Improvement can be broken down between

The Key Kaizen Practices n n n The key Kaizen practices are: Mindset & Culture v customer orientation v quality control (QC) circles v suggestion system v discipline in the workplace v small-group activities v cooperative labor-management v relations v total quality control (TQC) v quality improvement

Production Process n n n n n v The production process are: v automation & robotics v autonomation v zero defects v total productive maintenance v (TPM) v kamban v just-in-time (JIT) v productivity improvement new product development

Kaizen: Seven Key Concepts n n 1. Standardize-Do-Check-Act (SDCA) to Plan-DO -Check-Act (PDCA) - Follow the Shewhart cycle 2. The next process is the customer – Ask what you can do to improve product or services that you pass along to the next process. 3. Quality first – Improving quality automatically improves cost and delivery, while focus on cost usually causes deterioration in quality and delivery.

n n n 4. Market-in, product out – Instead of pushing products into the market and hoping customers will buy them, ask potential customers what they need/want and develop products that meet these needs and wants. 5. Upstream management – The sooner in the design/pilot test/production/market cycle a problem can be found and corrected, the less time and money is wasted. 6. Speak with data – The statistical tools from Exhibit 4 will provide data for convincing arguments.

n 7. Variability control and recurrence prevention – Ask ‘Why? ’ five times to get to the real cause of a problem and to avoid just treating the effect of the problem.

Kaizen’s Problem-Solving Tools P – Plan Pick a project (Pareto Principle) Gather data (Histogram and Control Charts) Find cause (Process Flow Diagram and Cause/Effect Diagram Pick likely causes (Pareto Principle and Scatter Diagrams) Try Solution (Cause/Effect 0 who, what, why, when, where, how n

n n n D – Do Implement solution C – Check Monitor results (Pareto, Histograms, and Control Charts) A – Act Standardize on new process

Kaizen’s Seven Deadly Wastes n n 1. Overproduction – Production more than production schedule 2. Waiting – Poor balance of work; operator attention time 3. Transportation – Long moves; restacking; pick up/put down 4. Processing – Protecting parts for transport to another process

n n n 5. Inventory – Too much material ahead of process hides problems 6. Motion – Walking to get parts because of space taken by high WIP. 7. Defects – Material and labor are wasted; capacity is lost at bottleneck