Kaizen is all about improvement

Dear Workplace Expert

My colleagues attended a staff training recently where they were taught about Kaizen. I have heard about it and want to know more.

J Onyango

Mombasa

Kaizen is a Japanese word which means "continuous improvement". Kaizen was created in Japan following World War II. It comes from the Japanese words "Kai" meaning school and "Zen" meaning wisdom.

Kaizen is described as a system of continuous improvement in quality, technology, processes, company culture, productivity, safety and leadership.

At the workplace, Kaizen is a system that involves every employee — from top management to the cleaning crew. Everyone is encouraged to come up with small improvement suggestions on a regular basis. Involvement of every employee is critical, just as Kaizen suggests.

The Kaizen philosophy is to "do it better, make it better, and improve it even if it isn’t broken, because if we don’t, we can’t compete with those who do."

Kaizen involves setting standards and then continually improving those standards.

To support the standards Kaizen also involves providing training, correct materials and leadership / supervision that is needed for employees to achieve the higher standards and maintain their ability to meet those standards on an on-going basis.

Your colleagues were taught and trained to adapt a philosophy of continuous improvement. The training is meant to help an employee proactively improve production, reduce manufacturing waste, increase employee involvement, and increase customer satisfaction.

Companies that continuously improve, continuously succeed.

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