Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)

1
Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)

• If youre not making progress all the time,
  youre slipping backwards. Sir J. Harvey Jones
  
• There are 2 key elements to Kaizen
• Most improvements are based around people and
  their ideas rather than new technology
• Each change may be small but the cumulative
  effects can be substantial.
• For it to work, management must establish a
  positive culture. What are the characteristics of
  this culture?
• 1 Employee, 2 Jobs Employees should do the and
  look at ways to improve it (as, after all, it is
  the people on the job who know most about it). A
  firms greatest resource is their staff. This
  also has a significant effect on job security.
• Teamwork Members of each cell are responsible
  for its quality. Kaizen aims to tap into the
  cells knowledge by organising each cell into a
  quality circle which aims to find solutions and
  make recommendations. To be successful, employees
  must have real decision making power.
• Performance Targets and Monitoring These are
  vital. They have 3 main benefits
• - quality faults are easier to detect and those
  involved can put forward solutions
• - targets are used to judge if Kaizen is
  successful
• - setting and monitoring quantitative targets
  enables benchmarking surveys to take place.

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Problems with Kaizen Implementation

• Culture Kaizen needs employee commitment and
  motivation. Resistance can come
  from -Management Autocratic managers see
  de-layering, employee empowerment etc. as a
  threat
• -Employees Dont want change, is it an excuse
  to get more from them?
• Training Costs It can be expensive and can take
  time.
• Justifying the cost of Kaizen It is hard to
  assess the value of programmes designed to
  develop the stock of human capital within the
  company. Therefore, budgets are often difficult
  to win for Kaizen programmes.

Limitations of Kaizen

• Diminishing Returns Improvements will fall as
  time goes by. Once the main problems are solved,
  only little ones remain. Staff will also become
  less motivated.
• Radical Solutions Sometimes one doesnt just
  need to tweak systems, you need to overhaul
  them. In such cases some feel Kaizen is not
  radical enough.

Issues for analysis

• Kaizen is more useful early on in a P.L.C.,
  otherwise it will only slow down decline, and not
  stop it.
• Market leaders use Kaizen as they are ahead of
  the market others often need more radical
  solutions.