Kaizen philosophy

Definition of Kaizen

In Japanese, Kaizen generally means change for the better. In business practice, it is the daily improvement of processes with the involvement of every employee. Any improvement in work that leads to increased safety, company efficiency and quality of work is called kaizen. In Polish companies using Lean Management, it is often used as a substitute for the words: idea, improvement suggestion.

Kaizen scheme

The principle of kaizen is to improve and change for the better an ongoing process. The goal of the changes made is to:

• to reduce process execution time,
• improving quality,
• technical changes to system components to adjust accordingly,
• cost reduction,
• creation of appropriate evaluation and reward criteria.

Achieving these goals leads to an increase in the efficiency of the work performed, and can improve ergonomics and occupational safety.
In practice, kaizen often takes a formalized form, consisting of the following elements:

1. A new job position for a supervisor.
   A fairly broad range of responsibilities results in one full-time person being assigned to this function. This person is almost always responsible for spreading the word and training employees accordingly.
2. Introduce an improvement form available to every employee.
   It can be in paper or electronic form. The completed application can go to the kaizen box or directly to the person responsible for the program.
3. The decision to accept or reject the request.
   The decision depends on the type of request, which may be for an improvement that has already been made. The decision path - whether to accept the request or not - may be more extensive and involve other employees (management) of the area to which it applies.
4. Implementation of actions proposed in the application
   These actions can be taken by: the author of the application, the person coordinating kaizen activities, other people or departments assigned to the areas.
5. Announcing information about accepted proposals and rewarding the best ideas.
   Often tables or other summary statements of all ideas are published and those that have been implemented are marked. A team of employees with such a role at the plant may be involved in selecting the best proposals.