Introduction:

Kaizen literally means improvement - improvement in personal life, spiritual life and in working life.
Kaizen was first introduced in the Toyota manufacturing plant in Japan in the early 1950s, and it has since
become one of the country’s main reasons for its success. Kaizen (‘kai ‘ meaning-do, change, ‘zen’
meaning-well) is a kind of thinking and management, it is a philosophy being used not only in
management field but also in the everyday life in Japan. It means gradual and continuous progress,
increase of value, intensification and improvement. In Japanese management, kaizen means “continuous
improvement” involving the entire workforce from the top management to middle managers and
workers. The origin of Japan’s kaizen movement was the quality control method imported from the
United States (US) in the post WW2 period. Japan assimilated and developed this as its own
management practice method which later even surpassed performance in the US. This adapted method,
which became known as kaizen, spread rapidly among Japanese companies including a large number of
small and medium-sized enterprises. It subsequently spread overseas as Japanese business activities
expanded abroad and Japanese companies began to build production networks with local companies.

Definition:

Kaizen is a Japanese term that means continuous improvement, taken from words 'Kai', which means
continuous and 'zen' which means improvement. Some translate 'Kai' to mean change and 'zen' to mean
good, or for the better.

Kaizen is one of the most commonly used words in Japan. It is in the newspapers, on the radio and TV.
Japanese society is bombarded daily with statements regarding the Kaizen of almost anything. In
business, the concept of Kaizen is so deeply ingrained in the minds of both managers and workers that
they often do not even realize that they are thinking Kaizen.

Process and Principles of kaizen:

Kaizen relies on long-term, long lasting and no dramatic changes. “Small steps done many times” is the
method that they rely on. It is a group effort – everyone is involved and contributing. It requires a small
investment of money, but a large investment in effort, cooperation and training. Kaizen is the process
and it is the essence of an organization which creates an organization lean, mean and efficient.

Another key aspect of kaizen is that it is an on-going, never-ending improvement process. As we know, it
is not too difficult to introduce something new into an organization. The difficult part is, how to keep it
going and maintain the momentum once it has been introduced. Many companies have tried to
introduce such projects as quality circles, reengineering, and lean production. While some of them have
been successful, most have failed to make such a project a going concern. For instance, many Western
companies introduced quality circles by involving employees but most companies have simply given up
the idea of quality circle activities by now as a way to improve quality, cut cost and speed products to
market.

Kaizen is everyone's job; it requires sophisticated problem-solving expertise as well as professional and
engineering knowledge and involves people from different departments working together in teams to
solve problems: kaizen is everybody’s job, Kaizen deals with the management of change and is a
methodology in the right direction to improve manufacturing operations, on a continual and incremental
basis following the right steps :
-Establish a plan to change whatever needs to be improved,

-Carry out changes on a small scale,

-Observe the results, and

-Evaluate the results and the process and determine what has been learned .

Principles:

• Continually improve

• No idea is too small.

• Identify, report, and solve individual problems.

• Focus change on common sense, low-cost, and low-risk improvements, not major innovations.

• Collect, verify, and analyze data to enact change.

• A major source of quality defects is problems in the process.

• Decreasing variability in the process is vital to improving quality.

• Identify and decrease non–value-added steps.

• Every interaction is between a customer and a supplier.

• Empower the worker to enact change.

• All ideas are addressed and responded to in some way.

• Decrease waste.

• Address the work place with good housekeeping discipline.

Kaizen -The three pillars:

The three pillars According to M. Imai, a guru in these management philosophies and practices, the three
pillars of kaizen are summarized as follows:

1. housekeeping

2. waste elimination

3. standardization

and as he states, the management and employees must work together to fulfil the requirements for
each category. To be ensured success on activities on those three pillars three factors have also to be
taken account.

1.visual management,

2.the role of the supervisor,

More analytically on each one pillar of Kaizen:

Housekeeping:

This is a process of managing the work place, known as ‘’Gemba’’ (Workplace) in Japanese, for
improvement purposes. Imai introduced the word “Gemba ‘’, which means ‘’real place’’, where value is
added to the products or services before passing them to next process where they are formed.

For proper housekeeping a valuable tool or methodology is used, the 5S methodology. The term “Five S”
is derived from the first letters of Japanese words referred to five practices leading to a clean and
manageable work area: seiri (organization), seiton (tidiness), seiso (purity), seiketsu (cleanliness), and
shitsuke (discipline). The English words equivalent of the 5S' are sort, straighten, sweep, sanitize, and
sustain. 5S evaluations provide measurable insight into the orderliness of a work area and there are
checklists for manufacturing and nonmanufacturing areas that cover an array of criteria as i.e.
cleanliness, safety, and ergonomics. Five S evaluation contributes to how employees feel about product,
company, and their selves and today it has become essential for any company, engaged in
manufacturing, to practice the 5S' to be recognized as a manufacturer of world-class status.

On the following table the 5S approach is presented briefly for each one from the five activities:

1.Seiri: SORT what is not needed. Use the red tag system of tagging items considered not needed, then
give everyone a chance to indicate if the items really are needed. Any red tagged item for which no one
identifies a need is eliminated (sell to employee, sell to scrap dealer, give away, put into trash.

2.Seiton: STRAIGHTEN what must be kept. Make things visible. Put tools on peg board and outline the
tool so its location can be readily identified. Apply the saying "a place for everything, and everything a
place’’. www.michailolidis.gr 10

3.Seiso: SCRUB everything that remains. Clean and paint to provide a pleasing appearance.

4.Seiketsu: SPREAD the clean/check routine. When others see the improvements in the Kaizen area, give
them the training and the time to improve their work area.

5.Shitsuke: STANDARDIZATION and self-discipline. Established a cleaning schedule. Use downtime to

The benefits of employees of practicing the five S could be referred to as follows: Creates cleanliness,
sanitary, pleasant, and safe working environments; it revitalizes Gemba and greatly improves employee
morale and motivation; it eliminates various kinds of waste by minimizing the need to search for tools,
making the operators' jobs easier, reducing physically strenuous work, and freeing up space; it creates a
sense of belonging and love for the place of work for the employees.

Waste (Muda ) elimination: Muda in Japanese means waste. The resources at each process — people
and machines — either add value or do not add value and therefore, any non-value adding activity is
classified as muda in Japan. Work is a series of value-adding activities, from raw materials, ending to a
final product. Muda is any non-value-added task.
Examples of Muda in Manufacturing: Shipping defective parts, waiting for inspection, Walking and
transporting parts, Overproduction and Excess inventory which hides.

Examples of Muda in office are: Passing on work that contains errors, Signature approvals, bureaucracy,
Walking or routing documents, Copies, files, a lot of papers and Excess documentation.

The aim of Muda is to eliminate the seven types of waste (7 deadly wastes ) caused by overproduction,
waiting, transportation, unnecessary stock, over processing ,motion, and a defective part.

Standardization: Standards are set by management, but they must be able to change when the
environment changes. Companies can achieve dramatic improvement as reviewing the standards
periodically, collecting and analysing data on defects, and encouraging teams to conduct problem-solving
activities. Once the standards are in place and are being followed then if there are deviations, the
workers know that there is a problem. Then employees will review the standards and either correct the
deviation or advise management on changing and improving the standard.

Standardization process is a very important one that has few key features, presented below:

• Represent the best, easiest, and safest way to do the job,

• Offer the best way to preserve know-how and expertise,

• Provide a way to measure performance,

• Show the relationship between cause and effect,

• Provide a basis for both maintenance and improvement,

• Provide objectives and indicate training goals,

• Provide a basis for training,

• Create a basis for auditing or diagnosis, and

• Provide a means for preventing recurrence of errors and minimizing variability.

Kaizen and innovation: Kaizen practices improves the status quo by bringing added value to it. Kaizen
does not replace or preclude innovation. Rather, the two are complementary. After Kaizen has been
exhausted, ideally, innovation should take off, and Kaizen should follow as soon as innovation is initiated.
Kaizen will support the improvement of existing activities, but it will not provide the giant step forward.
It is important for the firm to maintain a balance between innovation and a Kaizen strategy that focuses
on improvement. It is top management's job to maintain this balance between Kaizen and innovation,
and it should never forget to look for innovative opportunities. If efforts are continued toward a clearly
defined goal, it is bound for Kaizen to yield positive results. However, Kaizen is limited in that it does not
replace or fundamentally change the status quo. As soon as Kaizen's marginal value starts declining, one
should turn to the challenge of innovation. Kaizen signifies small improvements made in the status quo
as a result of ongoing efforts. Innovation involves a drastic improvement in the status quo as a result of a
large investment in new technology and/or equipment or a totally re-engineered product/process.

Cross functional teams: Cross-functional teams are formed to conduct Kaizen events. A Kaizen event is a
project in which a specific area or manufacturing process has been identified as the target for
improvement, and a team has been assembled to undertake the project. A team leader is more
concerned with "how" his or her team works rather than "what” the team produces. Solutions are
sought as a team, even if a problem has to do with only one member, which reflects the Kaizen process-
oriented approach. In such an organizational culture, the role of the manager is to improve the processes
and to facilitate people's roles in achieving such improvements. A Kaizen team leader will be primarily a
coach. A process-oriented manager who has genuine concern for process-oriented criteria will be
interested in: Discipline, time management, skill development, participation and involvement, morale,
and communication. A cross-functional team assembled for a Kaizen (continuous improvement) event is
responsible for attaining the results targeted by the team itself. Initially, the most difficult part of the
Kaizen exercise is what problem to tackle first and how to measure the outcome desired. This is a typical
situation experienced by functional teams in trying to focus on a specific task that has to be visibly
measured. Once the team achieves some synergy the tasks of advising and innovating take place.
Advising consists of gathering source data and information so that the team can use it as the foundation
from which subsequent actions can be planned. Innovating consists of creating new ideas and thinking of
new ways of improving existing processes and products.

Kaizen approach means that rules on the team has to be established: Goals shared by all team members,
Participation and contribution by all team members, Conflicts should be negotiated to resolution, not
suppressed, and Criticism directed at processes, not individuals. Researchers like Robinson and Liker
assert that the concept of establishing cross functional teams to examine the processes and improve
them depends on several factors that "empower" the teams to seek change. There are many ways to
achieve the same level of performance: Jobs are broadly defined and skill sets diverse to assure quick
adaptation to change and effective resource utilization, Work teams control work design and functional
responsibilities, the human/machine interface is designed to be optimal, rewards are based on
contributions made to the effectiveness of the team, and training and development are considered life-
long endeavours. Because of these attitudes, the cross-functional teams are motivated to assure that the
organization is continuously improving its performance through the redesign of work, experimentation,
and risk-taking.

Conclusion:

Thus, the concept of Kaizen reduces waste- like inventory waste, time waste, workers motion. It also
improves space utilization, product quality and results in higher employee morale and job satisfaction,
and lower turn-over. Improvement in individual, people capabilities, new products (ideas), systems and
processes has made an organization accomplished maximum efficiency and quality. An open
management style that allows questioning of the existing systems and processes improves minimum
down-time and Quality at all levels. The result of kaizen can be seen in Japan’s accomplishment since
post world war 2 up until now.