Kaizen: The Key to Continous Improvement

Below are some notes from a presentation I watched about continuous improvement, which should be at the core of any organization that's serious about becoming better.

Learn more about Kaizen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

Watch the presentation here:

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/kaizen-techniques

Culture

• Small and continuous improvement
• Quick win
• Accept Failures
• Improve Quality
• Empower people
• Develop People
• Shared long term purpose
• Reduce waste
• Visualize problems
• Stop and fixing

Resistance to change

• Use small changes
• Influencing people over time
  • Celebrate wins
• Sense of urgency

Plan - Do - Check - Act

• Create a feedback loop
• Plan
  • Clarify the problem
  • Break it down
  • Set the target to achieve
  • Analyze root causes & get metrics
  • Develop countermeasures
• Do
  • See countermeasures through
• Check
  • Check process and result
• Act/Adapt
  • Standardize success

Why Kaizen Succeeds?

•  Establish a sense of urgency
• Create a vision
• Empower others to act on the vision
• Plan for and create short-term wins
• Consolidate improvements
• Embrace changes and new approaches

Kaizen Event

• Improve producitivy
• Cross functional team
• Provide immediate value
• Duration between 3-5 days
  • Pre Kaizen
    • ID the problem and collect metrics
  • Day 1-2 
    • document current state of the problem
  • Day 2-3
    • Root cause analysis and set goals to achieve
  • Day 3-5
    • Improve process
  • Post Kaizen
    • Analyze every month if the improvement benefits
• Daily Kaizen
  • Focus in short term goals and quick win
  • Individual or small teams
  • hour/daily review cycle
  • reinforces the learning and development through practice of problem solving
  • create new standards improving people and the organization
  • reduce waste and learning by doing

Top 10 reasons why Kaizen fails

• Absence of real culture - "this is the way we've always don it"
• Politics and blame games
• Fear culture - resistance to change
• No follow up after a kaizen event
• No sense of ownership/empowerment
• Short term vision - No sense of urgency
• Failure to identify problems - no problem is a problem
• Failure to see root causes
• Failure to plan and execute
• Lack of resources -  time, knowledge

Small changes to start

• Coach people
• Empower people
• Boost the team morale
• Lead by example
• Improve your standards
• Visualize your flow and identify the problems
• Always start from 1 or 2 teams
• Celebrate success
• Use metrics to identify improvements
• Accept failure and learn from it

References

• Agile Kaizen by Angel Mednilla
  • ISBN 978-3-642-54991-5
• The Spirit of Kaizen by Robert Maurer
  • ISBN 978-0071796170
• Creating a Kaizen Culture by Jon Miller, et al
  • ISBN 978-0071826853