Gazi Sanaul Hasan

The impact of Kaizen What does it mean, concretely, to eliminate waste and errors in processes? When it comes to handling process errors, waste, inflexibility, and variance play a huge role. It’s important to turn this concept into tangible effects. Eliminate waste (Muda): higher consistent quality at lower costs. For example, customers getting flawless invoices every time. Less inflexibility (muri): delivering the right amount at the right time (just in time delivery). For example, deploying employees in a flexible way to adjust to changing customer demands. Less variance (mura): a more reliable and predictable process. For example, standards and process lead times and quality being known and identical. The same thing for different people, products, or methods. Kaizen, and especially the focus on reducing waste, inflexibility, and variance, drive change in the areas of quality management, lead time, productivity, and attitudes and behavior. These changes lead to measurable impro...

What does Kaizen mean? Kaizen is more than a methodology, it’s a philosophy. Kaizen literally means “change” (kai) to “become good” (zen) changing for the better. Another definition of the Japanese use of Kaizen is ‘take it apart and put it back together, better.” Usually, this is a process, a system, a product, or a service.   The five pillars of Kaizen Kaizen is based on five fundamental elements: Teamwork that embodies the essence of “Team” Personal discipline Better morale Quality circles Suggestions for improvement The six Kaizen steps Kaizen’s continuous improvement process has six steps (DMAIC). These steps are about mapping unnecessary waste, inflexibility, and fluctuations in the process. Define the problem and the goal of using a problem definition worksheet. Measure the facts, where the gut feeling is supplemented with hard facts and data. Analyze the facts, for example using an  Ishikawa diagram . This is ...