The Power of Kaizen

 

                                            


Lean Nation,

Today I want to talk about kaizen.  Kaizen is actually two words: Kai = change, and Zen = for the better. Taken together kaizen is change for the better.  In the spirit of continuous improvement, organizations use a kaizen event to deliver meaningful team-based change.   The DNA of a kaizen event is to apply an entire cycle of the scientific method in a compressed time.  A kaizen event is traditionally a 4.5 consecutive day endeavor.    Of note is some organizations run 4-5 teams in the same kaizen event so there is a small distinction between kaizen events and kaizen teams. The investment in personnel time and leadership time to complete a kaizen is not insignificant.  The amount of time, however, is not as critical as being able to complete the entire change process in rapid succession. How large or small you scope your actual improvement will generally lead to a 3–5-day level of effort for a kaizen event.  

Great lean organizations almost exclusively use A3 thinking for their improvements. The A3 form is used to walk the user through the scientific method to realize an improvement. The A3 form consists of the following sections:

1. Background - brief description of the problem

2. Current Conditions:  a summary of the problem with charts, graphs, and tables as it exists today

3. Target Condition: the desired outcome without specifying solutions

4. Gap Analysis:  data and insights to the problem with the root causes of those insights

5. Countermeasures: creating a hypothesis of solutions to reconcile the root causes

6. Follow Up Plans:  detailed actions to test ad institutionalize the changes

7. Measurement Tracking: measurement of the changes to ensure the target state is met

8. Lessons Learned:  organizational learning from the improvement cycle

With the A3 form and utilizing A3 thinking, a dedicated team will walk through the scientific method and traditionally leave the improvement effort with two artifacts.  The first artifact is the standard work.  Standard work is like a recipe and represents the organizational known best way to do something.  Having the how-to instruction on how to complete a cycle of work is an organizations best way to ensure waste stays out of a process.  It is through the elimination of waste that a lean improvement is made.   The second artifact that comes from a kaizen event is some form of visual management.  Visual management entails creating the visual or audio conditions to give visibility that the process is on track.  Real-time interventions can occur when deviations from standard are realized.

Kaizen is designed to shorten the lead-time for results and assist in the changing of culture.  The consecutive work-day approach to kaizen yields the reduced lead-time and the fact that the improvement effort is completed by a team of individuals does the work is what changes the culture. 

Kaizen is not without its challenges.  Some of the more common more common problems include:

1. As a short-term endeavor immediate results are expected. It takes time to scale the improvement efforts across a department and ensure staff buy-in of the new standard work.  It can take even longer if the desire is to scale beyond a single department into a house-wide or enterprise-wide change. 

2. Bureaucratic organizations with inflexible regulations and higher levels of change resistance often struggle with the pace of change.  A sincere organizational commitment to improvement is required and conditions need to be enabled to allow for real-time change from the support departments. 

3. Kaizen risks failure without active backing AND involvement of leaders.  Leaders must support the change process, remove barriers to change, and model the changes asked of others to create an environment of success and improvement.

4.  Failure to scope the project appropriately is another risk of kaizen failure.  Having the wrong measures and /or wrong team members can lead to sub-optimal or even no visible results. 

5. I also see organizations that say they cannot commit the resources for kaizen.  Delaying production or services for a short while to create the capacity to perform kaizen, or paying staff to attend kaizen is often seen as a major reason why organizations do not complete kaizen.  I find that the time it takes to fund a project where the teams meet weekly for 1-2 hours oftentimes costs the same, and time it takes to complete an improvement is months (or years) and frequently from these projects, I see no improvement.  

If you are committed to organizational improvement and are seeing the results or change in culture you are expecting, maybe it is time to evaluate if kaizen is a better approach?

 Lean Blessings,

Ron

Ron Bercaw, President and Sensei

Breakthrough Horizons

www.breakthroughhorizons.com    

LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-bercaw-882a0a8/  



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