Be a Kaizen Black Belt (page 2 of 2)

These meetings enable the leadership to ask the "what if's" associated with the proposed process changes and provides the Kaizen Team the opportunity to educate the leadership on process discoveries and reasons for the proposed changes.

Kaizen Events are low-cost activities. The phrase "creativity before capital" describes the general spirit of a Kaizen Event, where the Teams objective is to eliminate process failures without expending much capital. This approach has several advantages over this culture's typical habit of prematurely throwing more money at the problem such as automating a process, in the hope that it will go away, before discovering and eliminating the fundamental failure that's causing the problem.

Holding regular Kaizen Events creates a cultural shift in organizations so that implementing rapid change becomes the way the organization operates on a daily basis. There is a transition period between operating the traditional way and embracing the Kaizen approach, the workforce needs to be adequately prepared for Kaizen Events.

Five elements need to be communicated broadly:

• Why is the organization pursuing change?

• What the organization expects to gain from the Kaizen approach

• How a Kaizen Event is structured

• How the workforce will be affected

• To whom they should direct their feedback regarding the Kaizen approach

Not all processes are good candidates for Kaizen Events, but most are. The essential trait is that the process is narrow enough in scope to allow adequate measurement of the current state and improvement within a short time frame. Even with proper scoping, a process selected for improvement may need to be even more narrowly defined after the Event begins.

The Kaizen philosophy is two-fold:

1) incremental improvements often lead to quantum results, and

2) if you wait for the perfect time to improve a complex process, it'll never get improved. Once the improvements are selected, they are designed and implemented rapidly.


Kaizen Events provide an excellent return on investment, in terms of both money and people. A properly planned and executed event typically provides measurable improvements ranging from 30-80% in one or more of the following six aspects of organizational performance:

• Reduced costs
• Increased revenue/improved cash flow
• Faster throughput/turnaround times
• Higher quality
• Greater customer satisfaction
• Greater workforce satisfaction

Kaizen may well be at odds with the 'old school' culture of keeping everything as it is and not rocking the boat. But for businesses looking for dynamic improvement and ultimately greater profitability it may well prove to be more than a just a quirky Japanese import.