|
|
|
|
|
Kaizen
|
|
|
Jeffrey B. Cloutier Internship - Avery Dennison Office Products Co. Project Kaizen Spring 2003 Kaizen Many observers consider kaizen-a philosophy of ongoing improvement involving everyone, from top managers to the lowest level worker-to be the single most important element in Japan's competitive success in manufacturing. One commentator's characterization of kaizen distinguishes Japan's process-oriented view of thinking from the West's innovation-and results-oriented view. In practice, kaizen is a system for communicating ideas up and down the company hierarchy; everyone is encouraged to seek out and exploit new opportunities, and institutional barriers to the information flow are dismantled. The kaizen attitude helps to explain why Japanese firms are so adept at exploiting new technology, even when they are not its originator. Kaizen-driven firms do not suffer from "not invented here" syndrome. Ideas are not the exclusive preserve of R&D, corporate planning, or market research; every new idea is welcomed and "channels" are forsaken. An example of Kaizen’s effectiveness is at Avery Dennison Office products were the simplest of just having areas cleaned and organized has improved the uptime of the machinery. These gains were achieved through a series of kaizen programs that searched out improvements that cut time by as little as two to three physical steps or even 2 to 3 seconds. The logic of kaizen is that breakthroughs result not from massive reorganizations or large-scale investment projects but from the cumulative effects of successive incremental improvements. "Rebuilding a factory," wrote William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone (The Virtual Corporation [New York: Harper Business, 1992], 118), "requires replacing almost every brick in the old plant. Do that too quickly and the structure will collapse. The only practical way is through kaizen." To be sure, quality programs and reengineering share a number of common themes. They both recognize the importance of processes, and they both start from the needs of the process customer and work backwards from there. However, the two programs differ fundamentally. Quality programs work within the framework of a company's existing processes and seek to enhance them by means of what the Japanese call kaizen, or continuous incremental improvement. The aim is to do what we already do; only to do it better. Quality improvement seeks steady incremental improvement to process performance. Reengineering, as we have seen, seeks breakthroughs, not by enhancing existing processes, but by discarding them and replacing them with entirely new ones. (Michael Hammer and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution [New York: HarperBusiness, 1993], 49.) The difference between kaizen and business process reengineering is fundamentally a difference in duration and magnitude of change; kaizen posits change as a sustained series of incremental adjustments, reengineering as an all-out commitment to wrenching reconstitution. Kaizen charges management to prioritize, standardize, and improve. Standardization and measurement are the keys to kaizen. Without detailed and specific metrics of quality and performance, there is no basis for moving forward; goals that cannot be measured are just rallying cries.
|
|
|
|
Still Can't Find What Your Looking For? Then Try a Essay Search!
|
