Kaizen.Business process improvement

KAIZEN, which refers to the philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and RCA are the formal processes for continuous improvement and failure analysis. A formal team is in place to manage this process. All events are documented and available for review (minimum of 25% of the plant population has participated in a KAIZEN event). 

The traditional kaizen blitz, used to reduce business process cycle times, has long been criticized because the improvements or gains made during kaizen events often are not sustained. To those critics I say, so what Mature Lean thinkers understand that for a business to become Lean it must impact how people think, act, and interact. This cultural or people side of Lean is the difficult row to hoe on anyone s Lean journey. When businesses hold multiple kaizen blitz events a week, they are doing so to improve business process cycle times and to win the hearts of their employees. They understand the biggest benefit of any kaizen event is not the process you improve—it is the minds you change. 

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