Kaizen is not a procedure, not a document that describes step by step actions of those workers that have been selected to implement it, not just a paper which becomes approved and becomes an official paper. Kaizen is not a methodology or theory like for example a Strategy Manual that a lot of companies have. Kaizen is not a philosophy like some military-oriented companies that require from their employees total loyalty, the desire to implement any order of management even if it will benefit the company or not. Kaizen is a quality and a religion. Kaizen is the efficiency of quality as a whole. Kaizens methods are not just problematic of management or sociology, economy, geopolitics or even psychology. It is a solution of mentality and metaphysics. To answer the question of if it is possible or not, it can only be given you really believe in the importance of quality and are ready to dedicate your time, money, and experience to quality. That kind of attitude got the Japanese workers on all levels into big and small businesses. In the Japanese language the word kaizen means continuous perfection. Based on this strategy all levels of a company are involved in the business process from managers to regular workers. The realization of this process is not that expensive either. The kaizen philosophy means that all our life (work, social, and private) should be focused on constant improvement. This idea is so natural and obvious to many Japanese, that they follow it, not reflecting on it at all! In my opinion, it causes the competitive success of Japan in a big degree. Even if the changes based on kaizen are not really that significant, after some time the business gets amazing results. Kaizen explains why the Japanese companies do not stop in their growth. At the same time, in a lot of industrial countries management prefers to do the major innovations: implementing new technology, the newest business management concepts etc. The big innovation assumes fundamental change to which all of the attention is concentrated. Kaizen most at the time is a quiet process and is not even obvious. However innovation is similar to a single shot and its results are often unclear while the kaizen process is based on common sense and with small expenses provides steady progress which justifies itself in long-term prospects. Kaizen is also the method described by small risk. Managers without big losses can always return back to the old way of business. The majority of "originally Japanese" methods of management and styles like quality assurance in the scale of the entire company, club of quality, or general quality assurance we can describe with the one word kaizen. Kaizen is the word that needs to be used instead of such fashionable words as "productivity", general quality assurance, zero defects, exactly on time, and the system of submission of offers allows receiving a more precise picture of things that occur in the Japanese industry. Kaizen is an umbrella-type strategy for all kinds of methods that can be added to existing ones based on the specifics of business. New ideas in business should be considered as one of the important principles in their work. Correct approaches and thought over the use of corresponding processes allows any company, no matter where it is, to benefit from kaizen. |
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