2. Assignment
Define Kaizen:
Kaizen is a Japanese word for 'continuous improvement.' It's made up of
two characters in Japanese: kai, which means 'change,' and 'zen,' which
means 'good.' It's used to describe a company culture where everyone,
from the CEO to the front desk clerk, regularly evaluates his or her work
and thinks of ways to improve it. The concept is that small steps on a
regular basis will lead to large improvements over time.
Kaizen is a slow but ongoing process of improvement, not a 'blitz' or
quickly implemented set of changes. The improvements are suggested
by the person doing the work, not an outside evaluation team. If a
worker has a problem to address or is considering whether a change will
make sense, he should pull in several team members for a quick
discussion and brainstorming session, and then decide what to do from
there. Kaizen methods can be used to improve the results of any firm
and can also be used in your personal life.
Explain the purpose of Kaizen:
Kaizen is continuous improvement that is based on certain guiding
principles:
Good processes bring good results
Go see for yourself to grasp the current situation
Speak with data, manage by facts
Take action to contain and correct root causes of problems
Work as a team
Kaizen is everybody’s business
And much more!
The purpose for holding a Kaizen event is basically to identify waste in a
manufacturing process and to eliminate it, thereby improving
production. A Kaizen event is Team Oriented, as it gathers the
managers, operators, and owners of a process in a specific place to
analyze, and map out the existing methods of the operation. It is also a
3. forum for developing, discussing, and allowing changes to be made to
improve the process.
Usually there are four stages that a Kaizen Team undertakes-
Step One: Analyze and map the current processes of a specific area of
the plant.
Step Two: Identify the problems and the opportunities for improvement.
Step Three: Implement changes to the process that allow for improved
workflow.
Step Four: Evaluate the changes made and follow up, with adjustments
as required.
List the preconditions needed prior to Kaizen implementation:
It's important to note that kaizen is a way of thinking, not a project to
complete. To implement it, all employees should receive training on the
concept of kaizen and should have some guidelines in terms of what they
need to do before implementing a change.
Benchmarking:
Businesses in both public and private sectors seek to continuously
improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their products and services.
In this regard, a number of changes have passed through the practices of
most organizations recently, especially concerning the management
accounting aspects. Business units are reviewing their costs, structures
and the efficiency of their functions. In response, the managers have
undertaken a review and benchmarking of their organizations’ costs and
the efficiency of business units despite having developing strategies to
control other operating costs. As such, benchmarking has reached
widespread diffusion and is now considered as one of the most powerful
tools for promoting process improvements and re-engineering in many
prominent organizations.
4. Gap analysis:
Gap analysis involves an investigation of the gap between the vision,
objectives and goals of the organization and actual levels of performance,
and establishing the actions necessary to bring activities in line with that
which is planned. For instant the larger quantity of non-financial
measures that most companies track, and the extent to which such
measures are aligned with the company’s strategies and value drivers.
One method for assessing this alignment is gap analysis’ which requires
managers to rank performance on at leasing two dimensions: their
importance to strategic objectives and the importance to strategic
objectives and the importance currently placed upon them. The
importance of a collective understanding and vision of what the
organization is capable of achieving, expressed as short-term goals and
long-term vision; and to creating superior performance through inspired
and committed people. The extent of the gap is the basis for a shared
understanding of the gap between current capability and the desired state,
the extent of the gap is the basis for a shared understanding of what needs
to be achieved.
Describe the Kaizen process:
1.Standardize the Process
The first step in kaizen is to standardize and describe the current process.
For example, a manufacturing organization may create a flowchart of a
production process to illustrate how products move through the process.
This provides team members with an understanding of the entire process
as it exists before any improvements are made. Standardizing the process
can apply to any area of business, such as purchasing or warehousing.
2.Measure the Process as It Currently Exists
Measurements are an essential element in the kaizen process.
Organizations can collect data on the process cycle time, defect rates and
machine uptime before improvements. The team measures the collected
data against the requirements or desired results from the process. For
example, companies may measure the actual cycle time for a process and
5. compare it with the required or desired time. The beginning measurement
provides the information the team needs to determine the success of an
improvement.
3.Identify Areas for Improvement
The measurements uncover areas for improvement in the process. For
example, if the company requires 100 units produced per day, but the
current process produces 50, increasing the efficiency and speed of the
production line is the identifiable goal for the company. Incremental
improvements can bring the business closer to its goal over time. Kaizen
focuses on small improvements that add up to big changes in the
efficiency and quality of a process or procedure.
4.Develop, Implement and Measure Improvements
The improvement team next develops methods to improve the current
process. For example, an improvement team may determine that a
rearrangement of workstations in a production line can eliminate the
steps a worker must take to complete a task, which reduces the cycle time
of the process. Teams may implement the new process or conduct
experiments to determine the success of the project. The same
measurements that were used in the early stage must be taken for an
accurate comparison.
5.Standardize the New Process
When measurements determine an improvement project is a success, the
team must standardize the process, monitor it and adjust it as necessary.
After the process is standardized, the team moves on to another
improvement area.
Plan and host a Kaizen event:
Decreasing changeover time on a piece of equipment or process. Using
kaizen, a team can improve upon the time to change over equipment
using the SMED system, developed by Shigeo Shingo.
Organizing the workplace using 5-S.
Creating a one-piece-flow work cell.
6. Developing a pull system.
Improving equipment reliability through TPM (Total Productive
Maintenance).
Improving the manufacturability of a product design.
Improving a product development process.
Improving other administrative processes such as order processing,
procurement, engineering change processing and other
paperwork/information processing activities.
Kaizen events, however, cannot solve any problem within an
organization. There are certain types of improvements for which other
methods should be used. Process improvements (such as Six Sigma-type
analysis) aimed at yield improvement and variation/scrap reduction are
key examples. Suppose that a particular process has a first-pass yield of
only 85 percent when it would need to be much closer to 100 percent to
run in a one-piece-flow environment. If the process must be analyzed
using experiments and statistical methods, it would make sense to utilize
a team but not a kaizen event. To implement these types of
improvements, a problem-solving team (or a Six Sigma team) that meets
regularly over a period of time works better than a kaizen team meeting
for five consecutive days.
