Kaizen is a system that requires interaction and participation from all employees, from the front-line crew to upper management and even the company’s CEO.
Everyone is encouraged to brainstorm and come up with suggestions for improvement regularly. It is a continuous activity carried out throughout the year. Employees from all company levels work together proactively to achieve continuous, small, and incremental improvements to the business processes. This way, different experience levels and skills can be combined to create potent techniques for improving the company’s processes. Kaizen is a process that, if performed correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates hard work while encouraging brilliant jobs, and motivates people to conduct experiments based on their suggestions and learn to identify and reduce waste in the business processes. Implementing Kaizen as an action plan through a series of Kaizen events teaches employees to think differently about their work. They are pushed to think about how their work can be further improved to achieve tremendous success.
Implementing Kaizen in the workplace
There are three stages in the implementation of Kaizen in any organization:
- Encourage participation – To ensure the active involvement of all employees, awareness about Kaizen must be created. After the necessary awareness training sessions are provided, conduct and promote Kaizen events and reward employees for successfully implementing ideas, which are the results of these events. In such events, the direct involvement of management is also
important. - Training and Education—Proper training is required for executives to learn the essence of Kaizen. The management level should thoroughly understand Kaizen in an organizational vision context, which needs to be followed vigorously to achieve the desired business results. They must also be taught how to be impartial towards everyone and encourage their employees to participate actively.
- Quality level improvement—After training is completed, people should remain focused on making changes toward improvement. They should take measures to start making small and incremental changes toward achieving long-term goals, like improving efficiency, processes, and quality.
In organizations where Kaizen is being implemented, transparency between different levels of the organization is very crucial. Effective communication should take place between all levels of employees.
While employees are brainstorming for ideas, it is essential that management also gets involved in these sessions. The manager should also ensure that their suggestions and ideas are acted upon immediately and not delayed by a week or month.
Employees should be informed about other activities in the team and how their ideas are being worked upon. People should not feel that their ideas have all gone to waste and are not being used. A positive mindset will help keep Kaizen alive in the organization.
Thus, the constant application of Kaizen creates huge long-term value by developing the culture that is needed for genuine continuous improvement.
Kaizen’s five primary elements
Kaizen is founded upon five primary elements:
- Quality Circles: A quality circle is a group of people who work on the same or similar project and meet regularly to identify, analyze, and solve work‐related issues.
- Improved Morale: It is an essential step in achieving long-term efficiency and productivity.
- Teamwork: Kaizen strives to help employees see that they are all part of a team and need to work together to succeed.
- Personal Discipline: Employees’ commitment to personal discipline ensures that the team remains strong.
- Suggestions for Improvement: Gathering feedback from all employees ensures that all problems are addressed before they become significant.
What about your workplace? Are you continuously improving? Are you embracing Kaizen?
Chris