Kaizen and continuous improvement

Teamwork, personal discipline, improved morale, quality circles and suggestions for improvement. All five need to be in place at the same time for kaizen to work as a continuous improvement system rather than a periodic improvement program.

Daily kaizen is the small improvements operators make within their own authority. A kaizen event, also called a kaizen blitz or rapid improvement event, is a structured three-to-five-day workshop in which a cross-functional team works full time on one defined process problem, puts countermeasures in place and updates standard work before the event closes.

Plan, Do, Check and Act. Walter Shewhart developed the cycle at Bell Laboratories and W. Edwards Deming popularized it in Japan, where it became the structure through which every kaizen change in the Toyota Production System is designed, tested, verified and standardized.

No. Continuous improvement is a broad philosophy of making systematic, incremental improvements that applies across industries and functions. Lean manufacturing is a specific production management system with defined structural elements and a focus on customer value, and it includes continuous improvement as one of its five core principles.