Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning “change for the better” or “continuous improvement.” It is a Japanese business philosophy regarding the processes that continuously improve operations and involve all employees. Kaizen sees improvement in productivity as a gradual and systematic process.

Kaizen is about decreasing waste by eliminating overproduction, improving quality, being more efficient, having less idle time, and reducing unnecessary activities. All these translate to cost savings and can turn potential losses into profits.

Kaizen is a system that requires interaction and participation from all employees, from the front line employee to the company’s top management and even CEO. Everyone is encouraged to brainstorm and come up with suggestions for improvement regularly. It is a continuous activity carried out throughout the year.

Employees from all company levels work together proactively to achieve continuous, small and incremental improvements to the business processes. In this way, different levels of experience and skills can be brought together to create very powerful techniques for improving the company’s processes.

Kaizen is a process, which if performed correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates hard work while encouraging smart work, motivates people to conduct experiments based on their suggestions, learn to identify and reduce wastes in the business processes.

When Kaizen is implemented as an action plan through a series of Kaizen events, it teaches employees to think differently about their work. They are pushed to consider how their current work can be further improved in order to achieve greater success.

Implementing Kaizen in the workplace

There are three stages in the implementation of Kaizen in any organization.

Encourage participation

To ensure active participation from all employees, first awareness about Kaizen must be created. After the necessary awareness training sessions are provided, conduct and promote Kaizen events and provide rewards to employees on successful implementations of ideas which are the results of these events. In such events, direct involvement of management is also important.

Training and Education

Proper training is required for executives to learn the essence of Kaizen. The management level should thoroughly understand Kaizen in an organizational vision context, which must be followed vigorously to achieve the desired business results. They must also be taught how to be impartial towards everyone and encourage their employees to participate actively.

Quality level improvement

After training is completed, people should remain focused on making changes towards improvement. They should take measures to start making small and incremental changes towards achieving long term goals, like improving efficiency, processes and quality.

In organizations where Kaizen is being implemented, transparency between different organisation levels is crucial. Effective communication should take place between all the groups of employees. While employees brainstorm ideas, it is essential that management also gets involved in these sessions.

The manager also should ensure that their suggestions and ideas are being acted upon immediately and not delayed by a week or month. Employees should be kept informed about other activities going on in the team and how their ideas are being worked upon.

People should not feel that their ideas have gone to waste and are not being used. A positive mindset will help keep Kaizen alive in the organization. Thus, the consistent application of Kaizen creates huge long-term value by developing the culture needed for actual continuous improvement.

Kaizen aims to eliminate waste and redundancies by improving standardised programs and processes.

Continuous improvement in Kaizen can be broken down into six different steps, with each promoting productivity:

1. Standardize: Involve workers from all levels and departments to produce a process that can be repeated and organized.
2. Measure: Using data collected, decide if the process is efficient.
3. Compare: Compare the data against requirements; does it save time or accomplish the desired result?
4. Innovate: Look for new and better ways to achieve the same result and find more efficient routes or techniques.
5. Standardize: Create defined processes that can be repeated for new and more efficient activities.
6. Repeat: Go back to step one and go through the steps again!

The cycle may seem repetitive and exhaustive but is very effective when improving productivity within an organization.

Productivity in the workplace can also be significantly affected by employee morale. Although often overlooked, employee morale can increase when workers know their voice matters and their ideas and suggestions are taken seriously. Employees who are happier with their work environment are more likely to work more productively. It is proven that engaged and satisfied employees are more likely to stay working in an organization. Employees who complete their work productively and efficiently will take personal satisfaction in their work.

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