Kaizen event history and applications: Kaizen is the Japanese word for "improvement", or "change for the better". Kaizen was a key element that drove the Japanese quality and efficiency revolution in the decades after the second world war. It was also influenced in part by American business and quality gurus (Deming and Juran) whose messages were often taken more seriously in Japan than in the USA at the time. Kaizen events are part of the Lean Techniques that can be used for manufacturing or non-manufacturing process improvements. Kaizen events can be used to quickly address persistent business and customer issues that burden any company of any size or complexity level. The use of Kaizen events has since spread throughout the world and is applied in many different industries.
Kaizen Event advantages: A Kaizen event is typically an intense 3-5 day event that can quickly determine the root causes and solutions to serious business problems. The Kaizen event consists of a small expert team led by an experienced Kaizen facilitator. This team is chartered and empowered by top management to allow access to anyone required to solve the serious problem during the scheduled Kaizen event. It requires absolute and full cooperation, openness and honesty from all parties. It should not be led by inexperienced facilitators that have never been part of a successful Kaizen event or have never been trained in the application of Lean tools and techniques. Kaizen events work best when they focus on the improvement of a business, manufacturing or customer service process that is too slow, inefficient or is not meeting internal and external customer expectations.
What follows is an explanation of the 3 main steps required to carry out a successful Kaizen event. They are broken out in 3 phases of activities: Kaizen event planning, facilitation and post-event activities.
Kaizen Event planning: The designated Kaizen event facilitator should gather all available information and data about the problem to be solved. Those persons closest to the problem should be interviewed by the facilitator. The problem should be actually observed and photographed and / or videotaped if possible prior to the Kaizen event. It is important to confirm that the claimed problem is a real problem and not a figment of someone’s imagination or perception. The facilitator should also determine who will be core Kaizen team members and who will be “on call” when required to give their inputs on a part-time basis during the Kaizen event. An agreement with the sponsor should be achieved on the contents and scope of a Kaizen Event charter. A specific agenda for the Kaizen event activities should be created. Ask what successes and failures were experienced in all previous attempts to solve this problem.
Kaizen Event facilitation: The Kaizen team might need a short introduction in how Kaizen events work with examples of past successful events shown and discussed. The facilitator might also present any data analysis or interview notes to the team from his/her preliminary work and investigations prior to the event. Also make it clear what actions result in unsuccessful Kaizen events, such as distracted team members and lack of access to other experts outside of the core team. Kaizen events can use a variety of analysis tools but almost always a very detailed process map of the current process will be required to identify all of the waste and inefficiencies that needs to be addressed. The team should jointly observe the flawed process together and agree on the good and bad observations that were made. A new and improved process should be the outcome of the Kaizen event with quantified and realistic improvements identified. At the end of the Kaizen event, management will be presented with the detailed execution plan complete with realistic task assignments and due dates to solve the problem assigned to the team. Some Kaizen events can immediately put solutions in place and other events require a series of action plans, communications and training to be executed before the improvements can be attained.
Post Kaizen Event activities: It is not unusual for the Kaizen team to create a list of 25-60 detailed action plans to be carried out in order to fix the problem they were assigned. A strong designated project manager will be required to drive and manage all of these required and agreed upon actions items after the Kaizen event is over. If a strong project leader is distracted, overworked or incapable of carrying out the identified tasks by the Kaizen team will result in a failure of the whole effort.
Conclusion: Kaizen events are powerful activities truly capable of solving seemingly impossible problems in a short period of time. A Kaizen event requires a clear charter, mandate from management, empowerment, an experienced facilitator, a knowledgeable team and the ability to execute agreed upon solutions after the Kaizen event is over. Kaizen event training for would-be facilitators is available and highly recommended.
