Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement in management

On leading Japanese companies each employee is several tens to several hundreds of innovations per year, and almost all innovations are realized, and very quickly. How do they do it? The whole point of Kaizen – continuous improvement and growth, underlying the success of Japanese firms.

The firm Tôhoku Oki Electric Co. every employee an annual average of 570 put forward rationalization proposals, approximately 2 rationalization proposals of each working day, and in writing.

The secret of success in simplicity. Filling out a simple form requires only 3 minutes. Innovations quickly approved by the immediate supervisor. The employee can immediately be given authority for its implementation, and the immediate supervisor sends the innovations in shared company database that others could use it.

One of the most difficult aspects of introducing and implementing Kaizen strategy in any organization is to consolidate the initial successes and the gradual transformation of Kaizen in the natural style work in the future.

If the company provides any innovations such as total quality management or the establishment of action teams to improve quality, she achieves some success. Soon, however, traces this success disappear like flashes of salute the dark night. After a time nothing but good memories remains, as company executives begin to look for, what else would a fashionable thing to try to implement.

This happens primarily because the company has not fulfilled the first three of the most important conditions for the introduction and implementation of Kaizen strategy in the enterprise:

• Active commitment to Kaizen from the top managers
• The creation of an organization that is configured in continuous improvement and dedicated Kaizen
• Assign the best employees for positions in process management, Kaizen
• Regular training and learning
• Create and implement step-by-step process of implementing Kaizen

All the terms are important. However, without active support from the top management of each initiative, every attempt to implement Kaizen will not give long-term results, even if the rest of conditions.