KAIZEN

ARTICLE BY

PUGALENDRAN.S

KAIZEN

“Success doesn’t come to you….

You go to it” the famous quote is given by maruas Collins. Besides, suddenly we can’t achieve the success. To attain the success we should work continuously. We know that, Japan is one of the developed country in the world. Regarding the Japan’s development. There are many questions arise, How Japan developed after the worst hitting in the world war II?, Do they have any secrets that the rest of the world doesn’t know?, Do they have innovate and implement the new technology or are they just lucky that people the Answer for above questions is, after the world war II Japanese used many techniques to develop their country. One of the familiar method is kaizen.

After the world war, who they are experts in the war department’s to conducted training programme for restore their nation. Training Within the Industry (TWI). It includes job instruction (standard work) and job methods (process improvement), these become basis of the kaizen revolution in Japan took place in the 1950’s. The founder of the Japan-based 'Kaizen Institute,' Masaaki Imai, defined Kaizen in his book, 'Kaizen - The Key to Japan's Competitive Success' as, "Kaizen means continuous improvement in the personal life, home life, social life and working life.. The word "kaizen" means simply "improvement,” ("kai") means "change" or "the action to correct". ("Zen") means "good".

The basic principle of kaizen is work place effectiveness, elimination of waste, strain and discrepancy, finally standardization. It is carrying out small small improvements in large numbers, on a continuous basis. It must be achieved through 100% participation. Toyota is well known for one of the leaders using kaizen, in 1999 at one U.S. plant, 7000 Toyota employees submitted over 75000 suggestions, of which 99% were implemented.

There are four steps involved in kaizen,

— Select an Event

— Plan an Event

— Implement an Event

— Follow-up to an Event

Kaizen means everybody can easily do, not by few champions. And it’s for combined change and survival. How we adopt kaizen in personal life. for a example: A man Who weighs more than the normal weight he planned to reduce his weight from Jan 2010 means, If he eat less and in self-control, do some cardio exercise, and go for a daily walk and spend at least 30mins – 1 hr. If he do this for continuously for 6 months means. In July 2010 instead of him going for big size shirt he will go for medium size..

The same way we can do in home life and social life also. For social life we can take example of Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom struggle. In work life if it is implemented means, productivity improve 40%, work in processes reduced 70%, machine set up time reduced 30%, and space reducing for manufacturing is 40%. It improves current way production and eliminating waste. For implementing kaizen in an organization means, top management is responsible for establishing the kaizen.Middle management responsible for implementing and maintaining the work standards. Low level employee’s role is to participate in kaizen.

Resistance to change, Lack of proper procedures, Too much suggestion may lead to confusion and time wastage. These are some drawbacks of kaizen. If we implement the kaizen means we will get improvement without capital investment.

For further details contact through www.kaizen.com.

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